Type Specimen Poster
For the type specimen poster, I assigned to make a poster about the font, Garamond. The poster consisted of 5 components: the typeface name, the typeface designer, year of creation, the character set, and a paragraph about the typeface.
Sketches
Since my sketches often look very different from the final product, I worked on my digital iterations before deciding which version to focus on. In the my sketches, I tried to work on creating visual importance in the hierarchy. In addition, I experimented with the placement of letters. I wanted to use the letters to create form and texture in the background as well as use them to highlight the characteristics of the typeface. I also tested out a horizontal orientation to see if how the hierarchy would work.
Digital Iterations
While making a digital version of my first sketch, I played around the alignments and spacings of the paragraph. I felt that visually it was better to keep the text justified. It created cleaner lines. I also tried using a gradient over the letters to see how I could use that to pull in a viewer. I decided to start from light to dark to guide a viewer’s eye into the text of the piece.
This one did not turn out quite the way I imagined in my head. Although the G outline is striking, the content feels quite closed off and stagnant, and the eye has no where to escape. As a result, I decided not to continue doing iterations with this one.
The title is quite difficult to read, and the arrangement of objects of isn’t very interesting or eye-catching. Furthermore, the way the font title “garamond” is split up makes it hard for the brain to process what the title is.
The colors and the arrangement of content make this poster quite eye catching. I purposely tried to pick colors that would pop, and experimented with using the outlines of letters to try and create depth. However, the biggest problem with the poster is that the hierarchy is not very clear, so I worked on that in my later iterations.
Further Improvements
I selected 2 out of the 4 poster designs I made and continue to work on them.
Because the focus in the previous version of the poster was not very clear, I began to rearrange the content on poster. Instead of having the title, year, and name vertical, I rotated it. I also rescaled some of the elements and experimented with the kerning, alignment, and leading. Unfortunately, I do not think the elements really married together well, and the brightness and scale of the yellow letters detracted from the focus of the poster. As a result, I decided not to continue working on this version.
Since I thought my original color choices were too plain, I experimented with different color palettes before settling on:
I also changed the gradation of the colors, so that more of the poster would be a darker color. I think that this created in a bigger contrast with the text, making the focus more clear.
I also shifted the jumbled letters more towards the side to leave more room for the text. This also gave me more room and negative space to work with. Next, I shifted the text around to see the different effects. First, I tried right-aligning all the content and making “Garamond” in all-caps. However, I thought that lower-case letters highlighted the intricacies of the font more, and the lower-case “g” had a more interesting form. Since the character set was pulling attention away from the paragraph, I made it a light blue color instead.
So I changed “Garamond” back to lower-case and continued to work on the alignment and placement of the test. I was not a fan of the right alignment because it is harder to a reader to follow through. Next, I tried left aligning everything and made the text not left-aligned. However, I think that jagged edge detracted away from the visual appearance of the poster. I changed the alignment to the left edge of the “a” in “Garamond,” making “claude,” the paragraph, “1500s,” and the character set all align at the same spot. I also made all the text justified to create clean lines on both sides.
Final Product and Reflection
I am pretty happy about the way my poster turned out. This project was a lot of fun for me, as I had the opportunity to experiment with a variety of things and come to a better understanding of hierarchy and working with typography.
In terms of improvements, I wish I could experiment more with my sketches and first iterations. I think it would have been interesting to see what other interesting designs I could come up with.
Next, the quality of my craftsmanship definitely could have been improved. The placement of the cascading letters in the background I should have been more careful with. There are some awkward moments of tension of because of how the letters are placed. I also did not realize that I used another shade of blue for the character set in my final poster. There was also a fairly obvious river in the fourth line of my paragraph. I think that could have easily been avoided if I had double-checked. Hopefully, in the future, I will be more aware of these things and avoid such mistakes.
