CDF Project 3: Type Specimen Poster

Introduction

In this project, we were tasked with designing a poster for an assigned typeface. From this typeface, we need to include the following information on our poster:

• Name of the typeface
• Name of the typeface designer
• Year it was designed
• 1–2 paragraphs about the typeface and the purpose of its form
• A full character set for the typeface

In my case, I was assigned Avenir. A bit about Avenir:

“Adrian Frutiger designed Avenir in 1988, after years of having an interest in sans-serif typefaces. One goal of his was to design a linear sans-serif typeface that makes use of the experience and stylistic developments of the twentieth century. The word Avenir means “future” in French and hints that the typeface owes some of its interpretation to Futura. But unlike Futura, a similar font, Avenir is not purely geometric; it has vertical strokes that are thicker than the horizontals, and shortened ascenders. These nuances aid in legibility and give Avenir a harmonious and sensible appearance for both headlines and texts.”

Initial Sketches (Breadth of Exploration)

In this project, I tried to design a poster that emphasized the linear structure of Avenir while still showing its lack of pure geometry within its typeface. Some things I wanted to explore initially were utilizing both negative space around a large “A” character, as well as playing with the character set rather than keeping it in one place.

Some initial sketches I made are below:

Initial sketches of the Avenir typeface, along with basic descriptions and typeset.

Initial Digital Iterations

My initial sketches revolved around placing text elements around a large “A”. Amongst all my potential designs, I narrowed initial digital iterations to two main designs: one where the large “A” was the primary focal point, followed by all other required elements of test were filled in uniformly within the poster’s negative space; the other in which I filled the “A” with the character set, and then displayed a basic visual hierarchy with the font name, designer, year of design, and description following in that order.

Below are the first two digital iterations I shared with the class during interim critiques:

Initial digital iterations of my poster.

Seeing as these weren’t final sketches, I didn’t focus much on color palette; I just wanted to ensure that the colors I selected were fairly high in contrast (as to be able to read every element) and did not collide/make it difficult to interpret parts of my poster.

Interim Critiques

During interim critiques, I was provided the opportunity to reflect upon many of my design choices with regards to contrast, element hierarchy, color choices, and text placement. Most specifically, my work was analyzed most critically through determining hierarchy and the 50–5–5 rule. My biggest takeaways from interim critiques were as follows:

• Many of my peers contributed feedback that often conflicted other feedback I had heard in the past. As a result, it was up to me to determine how to approach further iterations.
• Determining the 50–5–5 points of emphasis on my poster were difficult. More specifically, at 5 inches, it was hard to see anything special that couldn’t be seen at 5 feet within both of my digital iterations. Perhaps decreasing paragraph font size, adding additional colors, opacities, or restructuring certain elements of my poster could help aid this in future iterations.
• I should be more deliberate in my color choices. While many of my peers thought the mint-green poster seemed more visually appealing, I faced the issue of actually using color to express the fairly linear structure that the Avenir typeface features.

Desk Critiques

In preparation for desk critiques, I played around with my mint-green poster design. Most notably, I tried to primarily address my lack of use of negative space in my first poster.

One generally consistent piece of advice was that the slanted “Avenir” text in my original poster seemed distracting and potentially unnecessary. In addition, the slanted text made it difficult to determine whether the initial point of emphasis I wanted was for the viewer to see the large “A” first or “Avenir” first.

I also wanted to see the results of transforming my blue-colored poster into a poster with a green color palette. I did one iteration of color switches before desk crits, as seen below:

Second iteration of posters for desk crits.

After showing these iterations to Robert, he brought up a few points that really drove me towards the iterations I made after desk crits:

• While the hierarchy works in the two left pieces, it almost seems too simple — perhaps some added elements that more effectively contrast the text could be used to entice the reader at close distances
• The choice of mint green, or a green palette for that matter, doesn’t seem very intentional. Why green, and not something else (ie. shades of red, orange, blue, black, brown, etc.)?
• The body text is incredibly hard to read because there are many characters on one line with limited space between the lines.

Further Iterations

The first issues I wanted to tackle were lack of creativity in placing elements and the color palette I selected. After several iterations of rearranging elements, I came upon this design, which I colored both in the original mint-green and other colors. The one I thought drew my attention as most intential was the one with a black background, as seen below:

Initial revisions and changing of color palette

While a clear divide between each component is clear within these iterations (the cross in the middle), I especially liked how there existed a harmony between all the elements — one that exuded the idea that there existed some linear or geometric elegance between each of my text elements. However, one noticeable flaw in this piece was the hierarchy. First and foremost, I want the reader to know my typeface (Avenir); however, it’s evident in this poster that one sees Avenir after seeing the designer and year, as well as (possibly) the character set forming the letter “A”.

My next iteration moved the descending Avenir’s to the left side, since by convention, an English reader generally is comfortable reading from left to right. Another iteration I created is below:

A further iteration of my poster. This time around, I wanted to ensure the hierarchy I established is clearly evident through placement of specific text elements.

While I particularly appreciated the clear separation of components and straightforward hierarchy (left-to-right, top-to-bottom), I felt that the background created far too much contrast with the Avenir text, as well as the character set. As a result, I played around with the colors a bit more, and obtained the following two iterations. The primary intention of my below two iterations were to emphasize a constrained and rigid linear space, while still maintaining appropriate contrast between neighboring elements.

Two further iterations. Left: I wanted to play around with negative space — adding an empty space in the top right might make smaller text elements less distracting. Right:

After sending these above two poster designs for some final feedback to Robert, he noted that the right iteration seemed distracting with regards to non-text elements, but that this was not necessarily the case within the left iteration.

I thought that within the left iteration, the contrast between black and white was too explicit, so I modified it to be a softer shade of cream yellow. Additionally, I added a bit more space between certain elements, and ended with my final piece.

Final Piece

Final composition.

Reflections

I really enjoyed the overall creation process of this poster. In particular, I learned the importance of visual hierarchy — keeping in mind what a viewer notices first on a composition greatly defines how effective the visual hierarchy is.

Additionally, before the project, I never really considered the 50–5–5 rule. Taking this into consideration, I tried to model my poster in this way to keep the viewer intrigued. Upon seeing some of the results of my peers’ posters, I feel like I could work on more explicitly noting some creative usages of text elements that can only be seen from 5 inches away.

I now also have a better footing as to how much color I should include on a poster before different colored elements begin clashing with each other. Apart from perhaps exploring other ways to incorporate the character set into my composition, I might pick either less colors to use or colors within a palette that complement each other better.