A Poster of FUTURA
Poster/Typography
2017
Individual Project
About the Project
In this project, we are assigned with one typeface and we need to do research on it in terms of the designer, the year it was created, and all the features of this typeface. We are allowed to used up to two fonts in its family and at least two weights. We can use color, but preferably white, black, and grey. We can also add a quote that works with this typeface, or the brief description of it. We are especially encouraged to be creative!
Project Progress
I started off with very literal sketches. Futura is supposed to be a very modern and clean typeface with geometric elements such as perfect circles and triangles. The picture I had in mind was a retro style poster because retro style also has a lot of clean, geometric illustrations. So combining the two together would be very harmonic. However, this aim of this project is to experience with typeface alone, not with illustrations, I had to give up all my sketches except the fourth sketch. I started my digital draft with that one, trying to create a comic book style.
I chose the condensed weight of Futura because it had a better sense of “comic book” than the non-condensed ones. All the elements on the poster should look like sun beam. “FUTURA” is bigger on the outer part and smaller on the inner part to create a three-dimensional effect. I used different weights on the characters of Futura such as “professional”, “modern” because I wanted to emphasize these more important features. At the right side bottom there’s a quote from the plate that was brought to the moon, which I thought matches the idea of Futura very well. Since there were still some spaces on the right side of the poster, I added the brands which use Futura as their logo fonts, put them in the order of length of the name, and aligned them to the right, so that it looks like anther sum beam. However, it looks very awkward, so I was debating if I should change it.
In the meantime, I was trying with other ideas as well. With the first one here, I used blocks of information found on wikipedia to create a huge “F”, and added “UTURA” at the right bottom. In the description of “Futura”, I used bold to emphasize the major features such as “geometric”, “ professional”. I tried to make it aligned on the right as well as left but I didn’t know how to. I played with the leading as well, but it turned out still very awkward. In the mini critique, many people said the “UTURA” at the bottom was not detectable from far away, so the hierarchy of this poster was not clear. In the end, I decided to abandon this one because there’s no much I could work on.
The second one used landscape because I was trying to fit the whole word into single page, and landscape seemed to be a better choice than portrait. With the similar idea of the “sun beam” one, I played with different scales of different letters on the same work to convey hierarchy. In the word “FUTURA”, I think the capital letter “A” can be a very good representation of its “clean”, “modern”, and “geometric” features. I arranged the word so that “A” would be the main focus. I used one white square to cover the top part of left line of each “U” so that the word would look smoother at the top half. However, it still look very awkward and I didn’t know how to make it look nicer, so I abandoned this idea as well.
The third one was created with the idea of “professional” feature of Futura. The poster looks exactly like a preface of a book. The hierarchy is clear, the content is appropriately long. Everything looks very organic together. And in the mini critique, someone said she liked this one very much. However, this poster looked too boring and simple for me. I wanted to do something fun, I wanted to incorporate words into illustration. And this one couldn’t serve the purpose I had in mind. So it had to go.
During the mini critique, Mackenzie pointed out that the words at the left bottom looked very unorganized so the hierarchy was unclear. She also thought the condensed font looked very crowded at the bottom. Besides, the quote at the right bottom might be very unnecessary, even too much for the poster. So I modified my poster according to her feedback. However, I found myself very lost at placing the time and the designer again. If I put them to the right of “FUTURA”, they would be almost vertical and not readable. And the whole poster looked very empty if I delete the brand names. The non condensed font didn’t work well with the condensed one, so it was also very difficult to put the features right beneath “FUTURA”. I was in the dilemma between keeping revising my current poster and starting a new one all over again.
During the mini critique, I saw Madeline was playing with the numbers. And when I was looking for ideas on the Pinterest, I saw a lot of posters using numbers as the main feature. So I thought maybe I should try it too. I started off by having huge weight of 1927 and arranging them in different ways to experience “Futura” in its most organic format.
With the first one, I used the whole space on the page to put 1927, while with the second and the third, I was trying to used the rule of thirds and put 1927 on the first one third of the page. In the second one, I also left a white space at the left of 1927, but it looked very awkward. I didn’t know what to put at the right side of the poster, so I used grey to make the distinction between 1927 and Futura. For the first and the fourth ones, I placed “2” differently so that the “Futura” on the fourth one was bigger. When I showed four drafts to my friends, most of them liked the fourth one because it seemed more balanced. So I began to work on that one.
As I was asking opinions from my friends, I noticed that none of realized it was 1927 because the “1” and “9” were so hard to tell from each other. So I decided to use grey to tell them apart. I also kept the hierarchy in mind so I used the lightest grey on “1” and black on “7”. During the critique, someone pointed out that my “Futura” shadow was actually backwards and was a bit awkward to look at, especially the tension it created with the edge of “7”. I didn’t even realize that it was backwards before. And when it was printed out, “2” and “7” were so close in color so it might cause some confusion. Besides, the top of “F” looked disconnected with “2” so it created another tension point. I needed to work on it more.
I deleted the shadow of “Futura” because I didn’t know how to fix it. However, I introduced shadow on 1927 as well. And now it looks more three dimensional and distinguishable from one another. I added two layers of shadow to emphasize “Futura”. I also adjusted the degree of grey on 1,9, and 2. Since the endpoint of 9 could not reach the edge of the page, I used a rectangle to extend it, and now it looks like if it’s bleeding.
I incorporate the idea of “geometry” into the design itself. There are triangles at the left top corner and right bottom corner. 9 has a perfect circle. F and 2 also creates a small triangle. There’s no more information besides the typeface, the year it was created, and the name of the designer on the poster because another feature of Futura is “clean”.
