Project Three
Excercise 1 — Typeface Tracing
Excercise 2 — Typographic Voice
The generous spacing in between the letters give a sense of relaxation that I associated with the word “supreme.” The spacing and the uniformity of the lowercase letters’ height also makes the word look balanced.
The geometric form of the typeface makes the word read as one entity. While the line weight is extremely light, along with the wide proportion of the letter form makes the word feel grounded and heavy, or emphasized.
This typeface is narrower and taller than the others that I have chosen. However, the typeface still gives the weight of the meaning that “supreme” carries through its boldness. The short descender of the “p” adds to the balance of the letters as one group.
This is the only serif typeface that I used for the word. The high contrast between the serif and the stroke is effective in grabbing the attention to the word, conveying the royal connotation the word has. The stylistic curved serif also adds to this effect.
This typeface is also narrow and tall, but because of the thick stroke weight and the generous spacing between each letter the word still looks grounded and balanced. I chose to use all capitals to further emphasize that sense of status the word stands for.
Typeface: Times New Roman
Research
Commissioned by: The Times of London (daily newspaper)
Designer: Stanley Morison (typographer; typography consultant to “The Times” daily newspaper), Victor Lardent (advertising artist for the Times)drew the letterforms; Monotype
Date: released 3 October 1932
-new typeface for the body copy of the newspaper The Times.
- Designed for the letter press machine.
- Made debut on the newspaper in 1932 and was issued commercially by Monotype in 1933.
- Because it was used in a daily newspaper, the new font quickly became popular among printers of the day.
- One of the standard fonts & most influential typefaces in history
Use: — Made for the newsprint industry, continues to be popular in the publishing industry.
- Formal documents
Characteristics: -easy-to-read typeface for the publication, increase legibility
- Increase clarity & crisper
- High contrast of the strokes and sharp serif
- (narrower than most body copy fonts) condensed, with short ascenders and descenders and a high x-height (tall lower-case letters)
- because newspapers prefer narrow fonts to fit more text per line & to allow tight linespacing
- Modernized version of old serif (Plantin) typeface. -> Transitional serif type
- Strength: Versatility, Longevity, Ubitquity
- Times appears larger on the page, with tighter linespacing and more solid in appearance.
- design was altered in smaller sizes to increase readability, particularly obvious in the widened spacing of the six and eight point
Quote: Mixed heritage that it “has the merit of not looking as if it had been designed by somebody in particular.”
