Typeface Specimen Poster Documentation

In this project, I was given a typeface, Futura, to research and create a typeface specimen poster for. The goal was 1) to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of the form/history of the typeface (and typography in general) and 2) to explore and combine elements of hierarchy (linespacing, color, etc.) with elements from previous assignments (gestalt principles, rhythm, etc.) to create a final poster.

Here were the requirements for the poster:

• printed on 11" by 17" paper, trimmed to 10'’ by 16'’ (full bleed)
• name of typeface
• name of typeface designer
• year designed
• max 100 words about the typeface and its purpose
• full character set

Sketches

With the sketches, I wanted to represent characters that were particularly unique to the typeface, like the “O” and the relationship between the “i” and the “j”, so I explored these in some of my sketches. I also played around with changing size, position, orientation, spacing, etc. of the typeface name and date. I also tried a lot of different representations of the character set, dispersing and condensing characters in various ways.

The Digital Process…

I liked the idea of having a futuristic and outerspace feeling, which let me to choose shades of blue and purple for the background and add asterisks to it. I initially wanted to give a feeling of floating like in outerspace, which led me to play around with the kerning, boldness, and positioning of letters.

First, I played around with the spacing of the character set and the letter “o,” which is particularly unique.

Here, I changed the opacity, color, and orientation of text.

I changed all the type to the medium font and played around with the colors to find an effective hierarchy.

I experimented further with the background letters, character set, and color scheme.

The final poster

Through crafting this poster, the greatest lesson I took away is to prioritize hierarchy. In the beginning, I remember focusing too much on how I wanted the poster to look and the feelings I wanted to invoke, and not enough on the actual idea of someone walking up to the poster and learning about the typeface. After the first critique, I realized that I needed to fix many aspects of my hierarchy, and I gave that much more attention in my revisions. Nevertheless, I was stubborn to change the general positioning of the typeface designer, and it is hard to tell that the first and last name go together.