Type & Hierarchy — Communication Design Fundamentals
Fall 2017
This was a multipart assignment for the Communication Design Fundamentals course at Carnegie Mellon. The purpose was to familiarize and experiment with concepts of typography.
I. Typographic voice exercise
This exercise challenged me to represent a particular chosen word (“trust”) using different typefaces. I experimented with several different typefaces, both serif and sans serif, including: Eras Bold ITC, Century, Old English Text MT, Niagara Engraved, and Mistral. Each typeface resulted in a subtle difference in how the word “trust” was conveyed.
Eras Bold ITC is a thick sans serif typeface, giving the impression of a robust and sturdy “trust”, as well as absoluteness because of its lack of serif “feet”.
Century is more thin and detailed, but the longer lines/”feet” convey trust rather than playfulness. The straightness of the words also conveys sturdiness.
“In God We Trust”. The Old English typeface makes “trust” very serious and official. The rococo, sharp edges fit well with trust as a bank or “trust fund”.
The condensed nature of Niagara Engraved conveys some uneasiness. The narrow, half-filled letters also translate to “two-faced”, or untrustworthy.
Mistral is a very flowy typeface. The connected letters gives an impression of unbroken trust, while the slanted cursive is playful and conveys fickleness.
II. Type tracing exercise
For this exercise, I traced and filled out four different typeface examples. I learned the difference between serif and sans serif, and realized how subtle changes can transform a typeface. For example, typeface 2 has thinner lines and feet and feels more lighthearted than typeface 1. Typeface 4 has sharp corners and feels more futuristic than typeface 3.
III. Typeface research
Avenir
AVENIR — A sans-serif typeface created by Adrian Frutiger, a Swiss typeface designer. It was released in 1988.
Avenir is French for “future”. It was designed to be futuristic and geometric with hints of traditional styles and asymmetry to optimize legibility. Compared to earlier strictly geometric typefaces of the 20th century, Avenir is relatively organic. For example, the “o”s are not perfectly circular, so they are more readable. These qualities have made Avenir a popular choice for brand advertising and mobile applications like Snapchat.
EXERCISE 3
To learn more about type hierarchy, I played around with the line spacing, typeface weighting, and alignment of the given text. Depending on where the lines were aligned or spaced, or which typeface weights were chosen for which text, the text conveyed different meaning.
