Type & Hierarchy

Type Tracing

Experimentation with typefaces

Gotham, sans-serif, clean and tidy, but not strong enough in terms of expressing the concept of “purity”. Too strong political connotation.

Bembo, one of the earliest serif typeface. Classic, old school, but really has nothing to do with purity.

Avenir. Modern sans-serif if I didn’t remember it wrong. Clean and simple. Very close to the concept, but still not exactly.

Futura, modern geometric sans-serif, very low contrast. Simple, clean. This is the one.

Didot. Elegant, fancy serif type, implies “purity” in some sense, but not so directly.

Here are the five typefaces I experimented with for the word “purity”. These five typefaces are Avenir, Gotham, Futura Light, Didot and Bembo. Among these five, I think Futura Light express the meaning of the work “purity” the best. “Purity” reminds me of simplicity and clean. Therefore sans-serif types stand an obvious advantage over serif fonts. Among Gotham, Futura and Anevir, Futura strongly demonstrates its simplicity and “cleanness” with its very geometric shapes, which can be easily seen from the letter “u”. By eliminating the terminal of letter “u”, Futura delivers its message very clearly.

E3 Typographic Hierarchy

1. Line Spacing

2. Weights

3. Shifting

4. Weight and Line Spacing

5. Indentation and Weight

6. Line Spacing and Indentation

7. Font size, Weight &Line Spacing

Brief Research on Futura

Futura is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed in 1927 by Paul Renner. It has an appearance of efficiency and forwardness. It is based on strokes of near-even weight, which are low in contrast. The lowercase has tall ascenders, which rise above the cap line, and uses a single-story ‘a’ and ‘g’, previously more common in handwriting than in printed text. The uppercase characters present proportions similar to those of classical Roman capitals. (Wikipedia)