Type Specimen Poster Process Documentation
Task: Create a type specimen poster for Futura to highlight its history and significance
Sketches
In my initial sketches, I tried to make use of scale and alignment to emphasize the important elements. Throughout the project, the way I ordered the importance of the necessary pieces were as follows: (in order from most important to lease important)
1. Name of typeface
2. Designer
3. Year designed
4. Paragraph about the typeface
5. Character set
But after looking at some type specimen posters online and seeing other students’ sketches, I realized that I had limited all my sketches to the same vertical top down manner, where I just placed the most important things on top. I didn’t leave much room for any other elements on my page besides the necessary ones. While I think these simple grid-like structures make for good typographic hierarchy, I wanted to try experimenting with less rigid structures.
In the sketch on the left, I tried to emphasize the different types of Futura. I thought that it would be nice to showcase the different styles of the same typeface, but I think having the word Futura be the biggest word on the poster and be so repetitive would’ve been quite distracting.
On the right, I wanted to see if I could create the hierarchy I wanted without having Futura be the first word on the page. This was a revision to the first sketch I had above, where I tried to emphasize Futura more as the first thing that people should look at. I did this by changing scale and utilizing more whitespace between Futura and the other elements. Having Futura be placed in the middle of the page also helps to draw attention to it. I also had the character set extend to either ends of the page to see what kind of effect breaking the alignment might have.
Digital Iterations
After doing my sketches, I wanted to experiment more with how I could break out of the top to bottom vertical grid while still maintaining a good hierarchy for viewers to follow. I think diagonals would also fit the theme of Futura more, since it would feel less traditional and modern. I kept the alignment of the character set and paragraph because it creates a line of vision that viewers can clearly follow.
Here, I wanted the viewer to see Futura first, then maybe Paul Renner and 1927, then the character set and paragraph. But when I asked a couple friends what they looked at first, they said that they saw the 1927, then Paul Renner, then Futura, character set and paragraph. I think the 1927 caught people’s eyes first because it is upright compared to Futura so it is easier to read, and bigger in scale than Paul Renner.
Next I tried to use colors to emphasize Futura as the most important element, and to deemphasize the character set so it is seen as less important than the paragraph. Here is the color scheme I first started with. But the white of Paul Renner and 1927 still stood out way too much against the dark red background. I also received feedback that splitting the 1927 across two lines felt awkward.
In the next iteration, I switched up the color scheme to make Futura have the most contrast in color.
The slanted T was unintentional but I kept it to add more interesting movement to the poster.
I also had difficulty with how to format and shape the character set so that it would fit better.
I realized I had been working with the wrong size and fixed my artboard, which is why I then had these wide margins on the top and bottom that I wasn’t sure how to fill.
I also changed the shape and tracking of the character set and make it feel more intentional and fitting to the rest of the poster. I liked how the character set and the paragraph created a jagged triangle pattern on the right because it added to the modern feel of the poster. But to fit the text boxes, I took out special characters from the character set.
When I did a test print, the background color felt dull and I ended up switching the color back to the original red.
Interim Critique
The poster on the left was the version I took to the interim critique. The feedback I received included:
- People liked the use of colors but the color of the character set was too close to the background.
- One person commented on the fact that the warm color scheme was a bit of a mismatch for the typeface.
- Using so many colors was a bit distracting for some people. In addition, using colors only once in the poster (for instance in Paul Renner and 1927) disconnected some elements from the rest.
- The use of diagonals was good and gave people a ‘futuristic’ vibe, which I was going for!
- Some people liked the tilted T and commented on the fact that it seemed to be pointing up to the designer and year, but others were confused as to why the T was emphasized above the other letters in Futura.
- The 1927 being on separate lines made it so that it didn’t read as a single year.
- I needed to include the special characters in the character set.
- The paragraph text size should be smaller.
The interim critique was very helpful for me to understand what worked and what didn’t. The diagonals did give people a futuristic feel and the hierarchy of the piece seemed to be pretty easy to follow, but the color scheme received many mixed reviews. In addition, some of the choices I had made (for example, the tilted T and the 1927 on separate lines) caused a bit of confusion. I realized from this feedback that I really needed to have more reason and intention behind every choice I made for the poster.
After the interim critique
I revised my poster after the interim critique and took into account the feedback I received. I made the paragraph text the same color as Paul Renner and a smaller size. I added the special characters to the character set and had no more room, so I had to rearrange the text boxes to fit all of it. I wanted to keep slanted text boxes so I ended up moving the paragraph to the right of the character set for more space. I also made the color of the character set brighter and closer to the color of 1927.
I didn’t have a reason behind making a lot of the decisions I did behind this poster, such as the color scheme and the tilted T, so I decided to go back to scratch and come up with other ideas.
I wanted to move away from my previous color scheme, so I tried using a blue background. I made the character set part of the background because it was the least important element to me.
I wanted to make Futura stand out as the most important thing in the poster but I was worried that the dark pink color, the scale, and the use of italics may have created a bit too much contrast between Futura and the rest of the poster.
Also I decided the shadow for Futura could be a bit too distracting.
By making the f in ‘futura bigger, I was trying to create more parallel lines in the design but it ended up looking weird because the weight of the letter ‘f’ was too different from the other letters in the word. I wasn’t sure how to make ‘f’ bigger while keeping the a similar weight.
After seeing other students’ posters in the interim critique, I noticed that a lot of them used a character from their typeface and made it very large in scale. I wanted to try doing this with a F, which I thought was interesting because it also helped to create more geometric shapes on the page. I wanted to include more geometric forms on my page because that is one characteristic seen in the Futura typeface.
I think this poster achieved a good hierarchy because viewers will clearly see Futura first, then Paul Renner, 1927, then the paragraph and lastly the character set.
In the final iteration for this design, I changed up the colors a bit to make the whole poster brighter and the Futura pop out more.
I chose not to go with this poster because I felt like I could utilized the space better and continue making choices that better reflect the typeface’s unique characteristics.
In this design, I was trying to see what else I could do with the character set. I thought it would be interesting to have the letters be placed as vertical extensions from the “u” in futura. This emphasizes the long sans-serif letters of the typeface.
I had planned to put the uppercase letters in the same fashion above the second “u” but wasn’t sure how I would then have room for the paragraph or the remaining characters in the set.
I also found that using a vertical text box made the tracking between letters look extremely uneven. I had to change the kerning between individual letters to try to make it look more even.
A friend pointed out that I could maybe try having the “f” and “u” in futura be a part of the character set and I thought that was a very interesting idea. It also ended up fitting very well into the shape of an “F”.
But I ran out of space for the other characters in the character set and thought it would be very awkward to have the rest of the characters elsewhere on the page disconnected from the letters I already had in shape.
I received some feedback that the “F” shape could be even more obvious, so that’s what I tried to do in this iteration by putting the letters inside a “F”.
The problem I had with this was the white strip going down the right of the page that I wasn’t really sure what to do with. I did at one point place the rest of the character set there but it looked very awkward and misplaced.
I tried to make the red “F” bigger and extend to the right side of the page but then I probably would’ve had to abandon the use of futura as a part of the character set, which I really liked. I realized the colors used here were too reminiscent of the Supreme logo, which I hadn’t intended. I also found that the Supreme logo actually uses Futura.
Iterations for final design
With my previous designs, I didn’t feel like I was doing a very good job with capturing the essence of the typeface. Thus I took some time to think about what kind of themes I wanted to capture in my poster. Since Futura was considered a modern font when it was designed back in 1927, I wanted to go for a futuristic feel. After googling images for the word ‘futuristic’, I found a lot of space-y themes and black/green/purple/blue colors.
Thus I started off with a black background for a space-y vibe, with green, purple and yellow colors. I made the paragraph a solid block and aligned it with everything else because the typeface uses a lot of geometric forms and straight lines.
I also chose to use the compressed version of the typeface because it emphasizes the long letters even more and creates a more modern, futuristic feel to the words.
I added the “^” sign to resemble a little spaceship shooting bullets to add to the retro futuristic vibe I was going for.
Some feedback I received was that the white line I had added between the paragraph and 1927 was confusing, so I took that out. I also received feedback that although the alignment was good, there needed to be more space between words that didn’t go together so here I added space between Futura and Paul Renner, and between 1927 and the paragraph.
I added the character set in, hoping to use the special characters of the set as more bullets coming out of the “spaceship” but it ended up making the “spaceship” less recognizable as a spaceship.
So I got rid of the spaceship idea and tried to make a shooting star instead.
Although it was now more recognizable, I received feedback that a shooting star didn’t fit as well with the futuristic theme and took away from the retro vibe.
Adding the extra characters on the bottom right of the poster was an attempt at using Gestalt principles to continue the image of the shooting star off the page but I think it could also distract from the other elements.
Here I tried to make a rocketship and use a change of colors on the bottom to imitate the rocket blasting off but this was also not immediately recognizable to some people.
The big @ symbol was confusing for some people, but I had hoped that it would be like a round window in the rocket.
I also realized I could use the asterisk to make little stars in “space”.
I dropped the rocket idea but continued the idea of stars in the last poster by using all the special characters to represent them.
I brought back the spaceship idea because I thought it did the best job of bringing about that retro futuristic vibe, but this time I googled space invaders to get a better picture of how it would like.
I used dashes (“-”) to make the bottom of the “F” look like it was shot by the spaceship to make it even more clear what those symbols were supposed to represent.
I tried to fill up more space by spreading out the characters around the poster but I didn’t want to distract from the important elements.
Some feedback I received on this was that the characters were recognizable as stars, but it wasn’t very clear if and why there was an oval in the middle of the page.
To continue the use of geometric shapes, I decided to add more characters to form a perfect circle around the important elements. It would also be kind of reminiscent of black holes, which also help contribute to a retro futuristic feel.
Finally I added more characters to bleed off the top and bottom of the page and centered the rest of the elements in the middle of the circle I had created.
This was the final version of the poster I brought to the final critique.
Final Critique
For some reason, the colors looked different after I saved it as a pdf but I think it was okay. It was also a LOT harder to trim my poster than I had expected it to be.
Most of the feedback I received during the final critique were positive. It was good to hear that people did receive the retro futuristic feeling I was going for. People noticed the “space invader”-like spaceship right away and realized that it was shooting the “F”. In addition, people picked up on the space theme and commented on the fact that the special characters were like stars in space, which was intentional. I thought it was very interesting that the other Futura type specimen poster in class used a very similar color scheme as I did.
