Project 3: The Poster
The purpose of this portion of Project 3 was to create a poster for a particular typeface. We started by doing some preliminary research on the typeface, which we used to inform the designs that we came up with.
The typeface that I was assigned was the dauntingly boring, but effortlessly elegant “Times”. In my research I found that Times was designed for better readability of large amount of body copy for media like newsprint. The lead creator of the font per se was Stanley Morison, and the font was released in 1931. The main characteristics of the font, aside from enhanced readability, were the strong, simple serifs, the old-style feel, and the calligraphic thin-thick contrast.
With that in mind, I prepared the following initial sketches:
I liked the idea of blowing up letters to accentuate their features. My favorite characters were the “T” and the quotation marks, which I tried to showcase as much as I could. While sketching, I found myself limited to variations in layout that pertained to rotating, resizing, and rearranging similar elements on the page. I knew that I wanted to showcase the lettering somehow, and show that perhaps this wasn’t such a boring font after all. One can’t deny that Times is also a pretty classy font, which created a sort of mental block for me while I was sketching.
It was interesting to see how some of these designs looked when I constructed them on illustrator. Here are some of my first iterations:
In these iterations, I noticed some things that were working and some that were not. The different values were great for building hierarchy, but I definitely needed to be more intentional about how I was applying them. It was also clear that the placement of the creator and date needed more thought. In some iterations it looked tacked on, and unimportant. I also figured out that I still liked large letters, and wanted them to dominate my poster.
Some general typography elements that I needed to think about included the kerning on some characters, the letting between lines, and alignment. The sharp lines that the serifs of Times create gave me a lot of space to be intentional about how I lined up elements on my poster, and seeing it on a screen made it much easier to identify where I wanted to do this.
I also realized how quickly I was able to manipulate elements that I liked and put them together. Sometimes, though I did get a little crazy:
The clear issue that came up with the above poster during the first round of crits was the fight for hierarchy. What people did like, however, was how I played around with value and positioning on the page. Yes, it was confusing to look at, but it did get your attention.
I took these ideas forward while preparing for the desk crits. Here are some iterations that developed over the next few days:
This was one of my original pieces that I liked a lot while sketching, so I wasn’t quite ready to give up on it. I fixed the kerning on the quotation marks to make them more compact, and played around with using aspects of the font, such as italics, boldness, small caps, and character symbols, to bring emphasis within the quotation that I had found. I also played around with value.
While I was on a mission to get more comfortable with whitespace, there was something about this particular design that wasn’t doing justice to the purpose behind Times as a typeface. It wasn’t filling up the space in a way that warranted its use. So naturally, I decided to take a cue from another old iteration, and blow up the title and turn it sideways:
I definitely liked the large times on the side, and I liked that way it was opening up more paths for intention alignment. The strong line and edges of the T, and the sharp points of the M, were great opportunities, but I had little body copy. I again went back to an old sketch and decided to play around with it:
This design evolved as I introduced more character sets putting italics, bold, and bold italics on display, and played with values to showcase the legibility of the typeface. I loved the gradient that I was able to create both from the thickness of the letters themselves, and the value that I assigned each of the character set blocks. I definitely struggled with placement of the name of the creator and the year of creation, though. It was very much placed last, except in some iterations where I used it to underline “Times”.
I then took my previous over-laying experiment to the next level:
The clutter was unreal. My eye was flying all over the place to find something to latch onto.
I did remember, however, that during crits, some people had worked with landscape posters, so I decided to give that a try:
These looked better, but again were not showcasing the typeface. I resorted to bringing the character set back in.
These iterations got better as I went. I played around with alignment, and decided on the white background, as it was easier to read and easier on the eyes. Times is not a dressy font, so it didn’t REALLY need a black background.
I used thick lines to frame my final three iterations as an ode to the compactness that I was trying to evoke. I reintroduced elements, and rearranged my blocks, but eventually found the simplicity of the bottom left-most iteration to be the most pleasing. I had finally figured out a way to organize the whitespace in a way that was not overwhelming, and the alignment with my large-overlaid “Times’” looked optically well-aligned too. I was able to use tracking-adjustments to align the creator and year caption at the end as well. The result was a very contained, symmetrical, simple, yet ordered poster.
What pleases me about this version is the way value guides your eye around the poster. I imagine noticing the darkest “Times” first, seeing “Stanley Morison, 1931” below, and then walking upward through the character sets by gradient. The containment of the black bars almost halts the gradients at the top, and directs your attention back down.
The hierarchy that I was able to build with scale also helped in this flow of eye movement, and the white space gives you a chance to breathe after the almost daunting overlay of the “Times” blocks.
What I was most happy with, however, was that I was able to showcase the readability and simplicity of this typeface and its fonts. Despite the intentional clutter, and bulky blocks, the eye is still able to move around the page, and the attention is drawn in the right direction. The issue I had with arranging the blocks into a “T” was the distraction that provided from afar. Aside from not showcasing the distinctive serifs of the font — a point that came up in final crits — the gradient and alignments did not work nearly as well as they did here.
With no rags on the character sets, and carefully calculated layout, this was definitely the most satisfying poster that I put together. In future iterations, I would maybe try to get a little more creative about layout and communicating different features of the typeface, but - for now — I think this will do just fine.
