Times New Roman — Project Three
As part of my Communication Design Fundamentals course, I was assigned to create a type specimen poster, using only white, black and its values, and one spot color at full brightness. In this project, I was able to expand on work and skills from past exercises, such as scale and weight, as well as explore new variables such as color, tone, value, and texture.
A Brief History
Times New Roman is a serif typeface created for legibility and newspaper print. The Times commissioned Stanley Morrison, a noted challenger of what he believed to be The Times’ outdated font, who then brought on artist Victor Lardent to draw the letter forms. They worked together to create a narrow font that maximized the amount of type that could be on a page, while increasing general serif sharpness and contrast to increase readability.
This font remains one of the most popular and famous fonts in the world, as well as one of the most suggested-against.
Initial Work & Intermediate Critique
The first three posters I designed (above) were based on very different ideas. On the far left, I focused on emphasizing the phrase “designed on a dare”, which I had found in an article on the history of Times New Roman. It seeming like such a standard font, I thought this was a brilliant juxtaposition to its boring archetype. I placed this quote as the second tier in my poster’s hierarchy and made the font name the highest tier, hoping that the eye would read the two phrases together and take the reader by surprise. Since the backstory of Times New Roman isn’t well-known, I included a paragraph to give a good background. This also served to put the font to its intended use, and highlight its legibility and maintain a “column” format as is frequently found in newspapers.
This poster was taken to our intermediate critique, and the main comment was that the story was great, but the explanation wasn’t necessary since “designed on a dare” can stand alone as backstory. Additionally, my much-loved quote was basically illegible due to the tight margins I had placed above and below the quote. Finally, each information segment seemed too distinct, and made the piece look like five different posters.
For the next, horizontal poster, I took inspiration from Times New Roman’s popularity in the professional world to attempt to make a poster that looked like if the font had a business card. I struggled with making this look convincing, and ultimately did not show this during the intermediate critique.
The final poster prototype from my first round of designs was an experimentation in layering and alignment and was presented to the intermediate critique. The feedback I received was that the red bars could be placed more strategically to increase the legibility in the year. I had tried to make the Times New Roman title font fit around the curve of the 2 in “1932”, but again, it hadn’t translated well and just seemed like the title was improperly aligned to the red lines. Ultimately, however, this poster was more cohesive and better-liked than my green poster, so I decided to continue to iterate on this piece.
A Different Approach & Weekend Critique
I stepped away from our intermediate critique with great information on what was and wasn’t working. In one final brainstorming session, I also designed a new poster that combined my professional and newspaper columns idea into something more centered around the student experience: studying from textbooks. This proved to be a promising route, so even though I wasn’t able to receive feedback from the class, I continued to explore this poster and it’s concept.
As I worked on my highlighted poster, I was also iterating on my red poster to create more movement and input more information on the poster. Major thanks to Mackenzie for tearing me about the path finder tool and helping me weave my numbers through the red rows!
The images below are the posters I sent to our two course instructors for a final critique before the project due date.
For my red poster, my main feedback focused on alignment. For my highlighted poster, they noted that my hierarchy was a bit unclear, so playing around with scale might help guide the eye around the poster better as well as make the body text more legible by increasing the amount of words in each row.
Final Tweaks
The feedback was given Sunday, but the poster was due on Monday, so I knew I needed to pick one poster soon to focus all my efforts one. Although I liked both posters, I believed my highlighted poster showcased more of the functionality and aesthetic of the font itself, and therefore was a better fit to portray Times New Roman.
Now, the focus was on creating greater clarity in my hierarchy.
Final Piece
My final piece represents the good and the bad of Times New Roman.
The Good
The place where I run into Times New Roman the most is in textbooks, and I wanted to showcase the universal experience of highlighting Times New Roman text in a textbook, article, magazine, etc., as all students have at some point in their past. Using the column format, I was able to highlight its high legibility, as well as the fact that it’s thin vertical segments allow more letters in a column than other fonts (which is why it’s perfect for newspaper prints!). The footnote was included to further contextualize the poster as a piece of a larger body of text, which is why certain words lie below the main body. I also thought the roundness of the footnote stood as an interesting juxtaposition to the sharp serifs and verticals of the regular text.
The Bad
Perhaps one of the main pieces of advice any young professional will hear in their career is: don’t use Times New Roman. Times New Roman is a lazy default, it’s outdated, it’s cranky and stern, and you’re better off using Helvetica if you want to show you’re even a bit aesthetically conscious. The criticism of Times New Roman is important to showing how integral its been to any and all professional writing in the past 86 years.
To address these two sides of the font, I melded them together under my main body of text as a trail of popular descriptors of Times New Roman, from positive to negative, the most common of course being “boring”.
Feedback
I was thrilled to hear that everyone immediately understood the textbook highlight theme I was attempting. The most prominent criticism was on my alignment and positioning of the trailing descriptors — it wasn’t clear if I wanted to make a shape, or that it was supposed to be a continuation of the column above. The most interesting feedback I received was on Mackenzie, who said I could have dived even more into the newspaper/textbook theme I was running with by making the block text justified, then accentuating the rivers that would form through making my descriptors flow through them.
Overall, this project was a great experience in effective presentation of information and theme, and I look forwards to applying my new skills in our upcoming project!
