Project Three
Type and Hierarchy
Print/Illustration
2017
Individual Project
About the Project
In this project we were challenged to design a poster using a typeface that we chose out of a hat. The poster had to use various techniques such as scale, weight, linespacing, position, and more to create hierarchy within the poster. The poster had to convey at least what the typeface was, who the author was, the date that the typeface was created, as well as anything that we felt was important. This could be a blurb, a character set, or even just a word or character. We were only allowed to use different shades of grey ranging from white to black as well as very basic shapes in the poster.
The Research
Helvetica
Designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with input from Eduard Hoffmann, Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface with versions for English, Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Urdu, Khmer, and Vietnamese. It was originally named Neue Haas Grotesk but renamed Helvetica by Linotype and was meant to be a neutral typeface that had great clarity and could be used on a wide variety of signage. Helvetica has a tall x-height that made it easier to read in smaller sizes and at a distance, tight spacing between letters, and an oblique style rather than italic. It had narrow apertures which may limit its legibility at very small sizes and no visible difference between the upper-case “I” and lowercase “L”. Other features of Helvetica include: a narrow “t” and “f”, square looking “s”, bracketed top flag of “1", rounded off square tail of “R”, concave curved stem of “7”, and a two-stored “a” with curves of the bowl and stem. Some notable uses of Helvetica include commercial wordmarks, within the US and Canadian government, and within the transportation setting such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of NYC. It lost some use with the increased availability of other fonts on digital desktop publishing systems and due to criticism of some type designers calling it “cheap.”
Some words or phrases that may describe Helvetica well may include:
“The universal typeface”
“The typeface for everything”
“Omnipresent”
“A simple masterpiece”
The Design Process
Sketches
In the first sketch I decided to play with the weight and size of the typeface. “Helvetica” would be written in bold and there would be a blurb and character sets underneath it.
In the second sketch I tried an vertical layout for the word “Helvetica” along with a small blurb next to it to experiment with white space.
The third sketch I tried to play with scale and positioning, putting the “Helvetica” at the bottom and the blurb at the top.
The fourth sketch I tried to create a timeline -like feel by extending the “i” in “Helvetica” and putting blurbs aligned against the line.
In the fifth sketch I tried to play with alignment again but this time using a line to help create hierarchy.
In the sixth sketch I wanted to use the curve of “&” to align sentences to create an interesting looking poster.
In the seventh sketch I tried to play with angles and weight as well as the timeline idea.
In the eighth sketch I wanted to enlarge the “h” to make it very prominent to draw a person in and have a blurb somewhere as well as a nicely weighted title.
The final sketch was based off an interesting mark I got on an eraser where there was text in various weights stamped in a diagonal on the eraser. I would then add a blurb to the bottom right corner to give some more information about the typeface.
Digital Iterations Part 1
Here are the first digital iterations of this project. These were all done based off the critique of the sketches that I originally had and were to be presented in front of the class during first round of critiquing of this project.
In these following sketches I played with the fact that Helvetica was meant to be a typeface that was very easy to read. I tried to create as much chaos as possible by making a large body of text. Then I brought some hierarchy into the poster using either white space, font size, color, and weight of certain texts. I ultimately decided that these posters were a bit too chaotic to continue with but looking back, I think it would have been interesting to play with the tracking in the posters to make them seem more coherent rather than a bit of a jumble of letters.
In the following six posters I tried to play with the size of characters and white space to either serve as a background or to draw in attention. I also played with color and weight to bring things to the foreground or background as well as to add hierarchy to the piece.
I ultimately decided that “h” was the character to try and blow up for one of the posters for the first digital iteration presentation. At first I tried to use the giant “h” as the start for Helvetica but it ended up being not intuitive for the viewer to know that. I ultimately added the “h” back to the “elvetica.” I also played with the positioning of “Max Miedinger” and “1957” to avoid creating tension with the “g” in Miedinger as it was too close to the edge of the page. I also experimented with adding the character set in white on the “h” but I ultimately decided against it. Finally, I played with the font size of “The universal typeface” to make it more readable.
These posters represent the second poster for the first digital iteration presentation. Here I tried to use an interesting alignment of “helvetica” in a bold weight to create the heaviest hierarchy and then transitioning to the “1957” and “Max Miedinger” which are in the next font size and are located at the bottom corner of the poster to finally the blurb and character set that is in a light weighting and small font. I experimented with all capitals and all lowercase for the “helvetica” and with different ways of making the “1957” and “Max Miedinger” stand out. In this piece I especially wanted to play with white space and how it can help organize the poster.
Digital Iterations Part 2
I ultimately decided to go with the helvetica that was aligned vertically as the final poster. Going off of suggestions from peers and instructors, I reduced the line spacing of between the “hel”, “vet”, and “ica”. I also kerned and tracked the “ica” so that the “i” is in line with the “h” and the “a” is in line with the “l” to create a very boxy feel.
Another suggestion was to make the poster less top heavy. I tried experimenting with different ways to arrange text. I pushed the blurb down towards the middle of the poster at first but it still looked too hectic. I then tracked the text to it also had a boxy feel which made the poster seem more balanced but it felt too top heavy still.
I also tried experimenting with adding more text, a background color, as well as experimenting with a bit of a border with a large “1” or a box but these changes just made the poster too busy. I then decided to try an horizontal approach to the poster but I ultimately felt that there was too much to change for it to work and with such little time left, I went back to the vertical poster.
For the vertical poster, I decided to add more text to the blurb on the right hand side in hopes of balancing what I thought was a very top heavy poster. I then moved the “1957” and “Max Miedinger” to the right and positioned it such that the blurb and those two lines matched the same height and width of the “helvetica” to create a checkerboard like feel. It ultimately felt too strange so I moved the “1957” and “Max Miedinger” back to the left.
The final product that came from this project was a relatively simple poster that had a very balanced sense of hierarchy. The “helvetica” really stands out from afar followed by the date and the creator of the typeface. The blurb comes last with its light weight and small font.
Criticism from the class included the blurb section of the poster being too long and that the character set could have been cut out. This is interesting because I originally had about the same length of blurb as my peer was suggesting and I felt the need to add more. I believe that this speaks to the idea that sometimes less is more, something I feel is very important to this particular poster that I created and must have gotten lost during the time I was iterating.
Another note was on the idea that there were unnatural lines because of the boxy feel of my design of “helvetica” where vertically the letters seem skewed. Looking back this sort of seems like a problem but I really wanted the orderly boxy feel that this design had to really stand out.
Ultimately I feel like this project was a great learning experience and overall I am pleased with the poster I created. It embodies the emotions I want the viewer to feel when reading the poster, which is that Helvetica is a very orderly font but can still have some quirks to it. The hierarchy of the poster felt good and certain information, such as the date and creator of Helvetica, really stand out.
