Type Specimen Poster

Context:

The third project for cdf is to design a Type Specimen Poster. We will be utilizing variables we have learned already, like gestalt, scale, and rhythm, alongside new ones, such as line spacing, indentation, color, tone value, texture, and position.

This poster should contain: the name of the typeface, the name of the typeface designer, the year it was designed, one or two paragraphs about the typeface and the purpose of its form, and a full character set for the typeface.

The content on the poster should be arranged in a way that emphasizes and showcases the given typeface’s unique qualities, and should recognize the typeface’s history and usage today.

It is important to keep a couple restrictions in mind; the poster should only include type, color, and a solid background- you can not have illustrations, photos, or geometric shapes.

Content to be Included:

• Name of the typeface
• Name of typeface designer
• Year it was designed
• 1 or 2 paragraphs (no more than 100 words total) about the typeface and the purpose of its form
• Full character set for the typeface (letters, numbers, punctuation)

Successful students should be able to elicit the power of typographical signals for clarity and immediacy, adjust typographic signals to affect message and content, discover how typographical signals serve as visual cues for hierarchy and association, and acquire a methodology for approaching all messages.

Process:

General info about Futura:

Of course, before figuring out how to make a poster that displays a font, it would probably be smart to understand Futura first.

Futura is a typeface made by Paul Renner, and was officially released to the public in 1927. “Following the Bauhaus design philosophy, German type designer Paul Renner first created Futura between 1924 and 1926. Renner avoided creating any non-essential elements, making use of basic geometric proportions with no serifs or frills. Futura’s crisp, clean forms reflect the appearance of efficiency and forwardness even today” (idsgn.org).

The Plan:

As mentioned earlier, the content on the poster should be arranged in a way that emphasizes and showcases the given typeface’s unique qualities, and should recognize the typeface’s history and usage today.

As a result, I aimed to create a poster with a layout that reflects Futura’s geometric style and simplicity. To highlight the geometric aspect, I would arrange my elements with some sort of established structure; I wanted nothing to feel random, but that everything was neatly placed where it was so that it would “fit” with everything else. In terms of the simplicity aspect, because Futura is all about avoiding non-essential elements, I tried to keep my posters as clean and minimal as possible, and to only include the bare minimum needed to fulfill the project’s requirements. I decided that, if what I was adding did not help contribute to communicating the function of the typeface, it shouldn’t be added at all. All in all, my goal was to create a clean, minimal poster that emphasizes the concept of geometric form.

Initial sketches:

Initially, I wanted to get as many ideas down onto paper as possible, sketching whatever would come to mind. Personally, I felt that it would be much easier to explore through AdobeIllustrator as opposed to sketching, because Illustrator gives you the ability to copy and paste mass amounts of texts, or to very easily resize and manipulate elements of the poster. As a result, I did not write out all of the content in my sketches, but instead, drew lines as placeholders, and focused my sketching on exploring general layouts and concepts. I felt it was best to use sketching to simply experiment with putting different elements in different places, and to start focusing intricacies and details later in Illustrator.

Illustrator:

Moving into illustrator, I created five digital iterations, some strongly based on my sketches, while others were completely new. As discussed earlier, I tried to make the concepts of geometric style and minimalism well communicated throughout all five.

Generally speaking, I found it a lot easier to work in Illustrator because of the ability to move and resize elements so easily. Another huge shift was the added variable of color- with our sketches, we could only really utilize black, but Illustrator gives the option to pick the color of our elements and background.

In my first round of iterations, I decided to only utilize black and white for my elements, and an off-white for my background, in line with keeping things minimal and clean. While my posters felt clean and minimal because of this color choice, I learned from my first critique that there were some readability issues because of the low contrast between the off-white and white, and that the subtle-ness of off-white did not really reflect the bold sharpness of Futura. With that in mind, I decided to go with a “louder” background color that would would better represent the sharpness of Futura and contrast more strongly with both black and white- a blaze-orange.

Transitioning from off-white to blaze-orange

Satisfied with the new color choice, I was now looking to move on deeper into depth of exploration, and so I looked to move forward strongly with just one of my designs. At this point, I knew I was leaning towards the first two iterations I had made. The first one has a interesting dynamic with the diagonal repeating Futura that definitely had potential to evolve and grow through further exploration, while the second one does a good job of expressing the geometric aspect of Futura, as it has multiple “pieces” that fit together well, like the “Paul Renner” and “1927” fitting into the huge “Futura”. However, after talking to multiple classmates, mentors, and my TA, I felt it was best to move on with the diagonal repeating-Futura design. Generally speaking, the first design had tons of room for experimentation and development- there was already an interesting idea there, and huge potential for something even greater given a strong time investment. While being clean, its non-conventional and has a factor that would catch ones attention at 50ft* (*referencing the 50–5–5 rule for posters, which states that a poster should have an interesting aspect when viewed from 50ft away, 5ft away, and 5in away). On the other hand, the second design felt too “conservative” in a sense. While it does an good job of being clean and geometric, it follows a basic two-column structure and does not really take any risks. Furthermore, it doesn’t really adhere to the 50–5–5 rule as it lacks text small enough to only be observed at 5in.

After choosing to focus on this one design, I dove into a lengthy exploration process to create the best poster I could.

Depth of Exploration:

To illustrate depth of exploration, I felt it was best to show the entirety of the process, and explain the changes made from iteration to iteration.

1. First Iteration: General concept with a focus on minimalism, geometric style, and cleanliness, with an added interesting element in the repeating Futuras going across the poster in a diagonal.
2. Experimentation with color: Off-white to blaze-orange. Blaze-orange is a “louder” background color that would would better represent the sharpness of Futura and contrast more strongly with both black and white.
3. Experimentation with scale and color: Multiple changes in scale were made across the board, but most notably in the character set and the explanation texts. This was to make the boxes of text fit in better with the Futuras, going with the geometric concept. Furthermore, the color of the character set was changed to white to differentiate it more from the explanation text.
4. Experimentation with tilt: Generally speaking, my poster felt too upright and regular. Adding a tilt contributes and interesting and playful aspect while still maintaining the cleanliness and geometric style. In order to make sure I was not sacrificing readability by implementing the tilt, I asked people to view a printed version of my poster and I would observe them to see if they would tilt their head to read the text. Seeing that only one out of the ten people I asked had to tilt their head, I decided to keep the tilt. For future reference, this will be referred to as the “tilt test”. Thank you to Robert, my TA, for this great idea.
5. Experimentation with color: The color of the character set was changed to white to differentiate it more from the explanation text. Furthermore, based on feedback given in critique, I set the opacity of the character set to 40% to help establish overall hierarchy, as the character set arguably has the lowest priority in the hierarchy.
6. Experimentation with scale: I concluded that smaller text was definitely the way to go, as they fit significantly better with the diagonal repeating Futuras and help establish the geometric style and layout.
7. Experimentation with scale: After critique, I realized the maximum font size for the paragraph text could be 14 point, so I put the Futuras closer together to accommodate this size change while still maintaining the geometric feel I was going for. I also conducted the “tilt test” again to make sure this change in font size didn’t in combination with the tilt didn’t hurt readability, and fortunately, I got similar results and knew the tilt was fine. At this point, I did like my poster, but I felt there was not enough going on. Generally speaking, I felt that it was too balanced and minimal- there was very clear balance between the top and bottom, and there was a great deal of negative space. While neither of these things is always bad, I felt that the strong balance created a feeling of stillness/stagnation (just felt boring) and that the negative space did not really serve a purpose- it was simply empty space.
8. Experimentation with scale and layout: To address the issues with the last iteration: I first greatly increased the size of the Futuras. This added to establishing geometric style, as it helped the boxes of text fit even better than before. I also moved the entire thing downwards, so that there was still balance between the character set above the Futuras and the text below, but no longer an equal amount of negative space above and below the the Futuras. This iteration felt like a major improvement. However, there was still a great deal of negative space that I felt did not meaningfully contribute to what I wanted to communicate. As a result, I looked to find things to do with that negative space.
9. Experimentation with adding elements: Because Futura revolves around not including “non-essential elements”, I knew that I should only add something to fill the negative space if it helped communicate Futura concepts even further. For my first crack at filling this negative space, I repeated the phrase “Futura’s crisp, clean forms reflect the appearance of efficiency and forwardness even today” to create two figures that create a right angle. While it does add to the geometric style and fills the negative space, I felt that it filled the negative space almost too well. Furthermore, while the repeating phrase was definitely a cool element, I felt that was a little too much going on, especially for a poster that is supposed to highlight the minimalism of Futura. Still wanting to have some negative space to keep the overall design clean, uncluttered, and light, I searched for other alternatives.
10. (The final iteration)

The Final Iteration:

In this section, I’ll break down why I felt that this was my best iteration and the reasons for picking it over the rest.

Final Iteration

1. Visual Hierarchy: Whether it be through color, sizing, or a combination of the two, I feel this iteration does a good job of highlighting information based on their importance. Futura, naturally as the name of the typeface, is the most prominent/eye-catching element on the poster, while the text “Futura’s crisp, clean forms reflect the appearance of efficiency and forwardness even today” that makes up the grid lines is by far the most subtle because of sizing and opacity.
2. Cleanliness and Minimalism: Despite having a decent amount of stuff going on, because of the spacing between elements, manipulation of negative space, and general grid-like organization, the overall poster still feels clean and sharp. Furthermore, there are no “non-essential elements” throughout the poster, as every aspect serves a specific purpose, following the minimalist design philosophy that was so crucial in the creation of the Futura typeface.
3. Geometric Style: Whether it be different elements fitting into each other cleanly, or the grid that surrounds the main part of the poster, each aspect of the poster comes together to communicate the idea of geometric style that is so core to Futura as a typeface.
4. Interesting Aspects: The tilt and the repeating Futuras add an element of fun/playfulness to the poster while also making it more eye-catching and interesting, setting it apart from the rest of the iterations.
5. Adherence to 50–5–5: The poster has something interesting when viewed at each distance. Generally speaking, I felt that I would generally struggle with the 5in part of this rule throughout my iterations. However, I feel this iteration does a better job than other iterations because the “lines” in the grid surrounding the main part of the poster shift from “lines” to repeating text as you observe the poster closer and closer.
6. Negative Space and Balance: Because of the openness and subtlety of the grid, negative space and balance are conserved, but not to an extent to which it feels like too much and that nothing is going on.

Breadth and Depth of Exploration- a general overview:

Here is a screenshot that showcases all of the exploration done digitally over the course of this project: breadth of exploration spreads vertically , while depth is portrayed horizontally.

Exploration

Concluding Thoughts:

I have learned a great deal throughout the process of creating my typeface poster. However, one lesson that stands out would be the importance of exploration and experimentation as you approach your final product. Through the critiques of others’ work and my own, I realized that even the smallest aspects/details can have a extremely strong impact on the final product. Its important to explore as many versions of your final product as possible to find what works best, as a minor alteration, even a non-intentional one, may benefit the final design in a significant way. In my specific case, I feel like I could have applied this to the color of my character set- simply experimenting with color and making the character set black may have created a strong sense of balance, which was something many of my classmates commented on during my critique. Another important lesson would be to print multiple copies of your final piece ahead of time. While I was comfortable with the change in scale from my digital iteration to my printed poster, I was very surprised to see that the color of the poster was very different than what it looked like in illustrator: the orange in the background came out like red, and certain white text was much more opaque than I intended it to be. I’ve learned that it is just good practice to print out a copy of your final design maybe a day before the final critique, just to ensure everything comes out exactly as you intended it.

Nevertheless, I am very happy with my final piece and I feel the effort in additional exploration and experimentation paid off. I have learned a great deal from this project, and I am excited to learn more!

Thanks for reading!