Didot: Type Specimen Project Process
About the Project
Using different techniques explored through CDF so far, I am looking to create a type specimen poster that will effectively communicate the overall feeling of the type as well as display it’s character set. I was assigned the character Didot, and was tasked to use only the type and color to make this poster. I was required to include body text, a character set, and the font name.
History
To start, I identified to find a brief history of Didot to use for my body text. From Fonts by Hoefler and Co at Typography.com, I chose this small blurb to use on my poster:
“Fashionable for almost 200 years.
Created for “one of the most dramatic magazine reinventions in history,” HTF Didot honors a heroic period in French typographic history.
Modern typefaces, characterized by consistently horizontal stress, flat and unbracketed serifs, and a high contrast between thin and thick strokes, were the final step in typography’s two-hundred-year journey away from calligraphy. In the late eighteenth century the style was perfected, and became forever associated with two typographic giants: in Parma, Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813), and in Paris, Firmin Didot (1764–1836). Didot was a member of the Parisian dynasty that dominated French typefounding for two centuries, and he’s remembered today as the namesake of a series of Neoclassical typefaces that exquisitely captured the Modern style. It is these typefaces that HTF Didot revives.”
Sketches
Since Didot is a serif font, I begun to use lines and boxes to represent different chunks instead of trying to capture the details. The large boxes are meant to represent the placement of the character set.
I knew I wanted lots of white space for my poster. Didot has a very elegant, bookish history that I wanted to capture in my poster. I imagined small paragraphs paired with large amounts of space or an elegantly placed character set in conjunction to it.
Digital Process
In the digital iterations, I made many different layouts to experiment with enlarged characters, backgrounds, colors, and more. I stuck to some of the layouts I sketched out, but in some circumstances I borrowed small parts of those sketches and expanded on them digitally.
After many iterations, I brought in these three drafts into class to get feedback.
Overall, many people enjoyed the colors of the right two posters. There were many more in favor of the pastel pink. The most notable critique I received many times was to integrate the character set better on the right poster. Many thought that the white text and the size made it stand out awkwardly. Others liked the rhythm of that poster from the enlarged letters but they states that some of the positions were a bit awkward (the g and the z) and the white space around it could be better utilized.
Revisions
After the critiques and feedback I received, I decide to improve upon the right most poster from above and really work on the 1). integrating the typeset 2). fixing the flow of the enlarged letters 3). finding a color scheme that fit.
I experimented by changing the characters to all be symbols, by adding more larger characters, shifting the positioning of text, changing the type sizes, and by adding in more information.
After going through many many iterations, I was finally set on a layout I enjoyed.
Final Process: Tweaking and Colors
I wanted to extensively explore in order to find the right color scheme. I knew that the poster needed to show elegance, fashion, and still feel modern.
I chose many different types of pastel colors to capture a sense of old books and magazines.
At the end I narrowed and adjusted the colors down to these three:
Finally I selected the blue and brown poster for it’s timeless feel and elegance. I also printed it out to look at the overall layout and find places for adjustments. I changed the quote and some of the type positioning.
