Typography project
Not knowing very much about the typeface Gill Sans, my initial phase for the project was a lot a research. After learning about the typeface and its roots in Britain and it’s association with London underground, I was intrigued to find where it is used today. Seeing that many large names like BBC and Toy Story use this font, I started looking at this font like a modern font with a history and that was the idea I wanted to convey.
Phase 1: Sketching Out Ideas:
Essence of the typeface
Some things I wanted to include were:
- London underground
- references it to being called the Helvetica of England
- that it was first used in a bookshop
- how frequently it was used
I started sketching ideas revolving around each of these and came up with a couple.
Key Elements of the Typeface
Looking through the character set and other typeface posters for gill sans, it seemed pretty clear the the lower case g was pretty iconic and I knew I wanted to include that.
Some other elements of the typeface I considered using were the upper case G and upper case S but they were not as striking as the lower case g so I decided to continue working on that.
Phase 2: Digitizing sketches and playing with illustrator
Initial prototypes
Keeping in the mind that the lower case g was a big part of the typeface, I began to center my pieces around that.
This art board on the left was my first design. I like the idea of creating motion in the picture to communicate the idea its an old-ish font but it’s also staying relevant as time goes on. I chose the color purple because I thought it also communicated this idea. The posters that I had seen had a lot of dark colors and I thought it worked well with the typeface. However, after looking at this for a while, I decided I needed to get a little more creative with the format of the poster so I started from scratch
Hanging S
A hanging ‘s’ was what I thought of next. I really like the idea of adding some sort of motion to the poster and this still kept that idea. Initially, I had some trouble just figuring out how to make the s cleanly hang from the g but with some help, I was able to create the illusion that it was hanging.
Purely by luck, when I was working on the hanging ‘s,’ I selected the entire text box and the result was the image to the left. I really liked how the highlight created this color blocking and so I delved in to that idea further.
I created the middle art board in the picture above by scaling the ‘|’ symbol by a large margin. I tried different ways to create the color blocking and the picture to the right is an example of a failed attempt.
After struggling with this for a while, I found the crop symbol and that’s when it’s started to come together. I added the body text at the same angle and had some trouble finding a place for the character set so I just split it up and put it around the poster to create some balance. In retrospect, there was not much thought behind it which is probably why it came across so confusingly. I added some color to the background keeping the ‘modern yet old’ theme in the back of my mind. I thought the color yellow was a good choice to make the entire poster pop.
Phase 4: Critique and feedback
I cannot stress how great the interim feedback was. After looking at this poster for hours on end, a lot of the points that were brought up had not crossed my mind. Since this class is called communication design fundamentals, it was really important to see whether the message I was trying to communicate was coming across. After the critique, I organized the stickie notes across the poster to highlight which parts of the poster I should change. I also took down some notes while students were talking because I didn’t want to forget anything.
Awkward moments : One of the points brought up was the face that there were a couple of awkward moments: between the g and the ‘?’ at the top, between the pipe and the g, and between the s and the pipe symbol. I definitely needed to try a test print because on the computer screen, I could not see all of these small details.
Color: There were many people that said they liked the colors but there were also many people that said the color was distracting and maybe if there was one less color or a change of color, the poster would have better hierarchy.
Hierarchy and Titles
Most of the class was confused as to what the title of the poster was and so, the hierarchy of my poster was off. I needed to rework what I wanted people to see first and what i wanted people to see last.
Intention
One of the most common pieces of feedback I received was the fact that there was no intention behind the placing of the character set and it just looked random.
Positive feedback
It was also great to get some positive feedback, many people like the hanging ‘s’ and the size of the body font so I decided not to change those but work on all the other feedback I got.
Phase 5: More iteration and color
I played with different colors and looked online to see what colors worked for posters.
After trying different colors, I came up with two posters that I liked equally.
Then I worked with the character sets and tried to see where it would look less random.
I liked the one to the right but I think it looked a little chaotic so I moved away from including the character set in the s.
Phase 6: More feedback
Test prints
I printed out the two colors that I liked and asked a couple of people in wean library which ones they liked more.
Most people like that green one better because they said it would draw them in more.
I edited the title a little more and added some hierarchy in the body text to make sure that certain things popped out to the person interacting with the poster.
Final Touches.
After working on all the points that I got from the feedback, I finally came up with something I liked. I liked the colors because they were light and fun and communicated the idea of modern while the g, in its form, carried the idea that it was kind of old. I liked how the character set wasn’t too obvious except on the right and the left of the pipe symbol. I placed the body text towards the bottom because I wanted to make sure the hierarchy of text was cemented.
I really liked this project because it gave me an exposure to different typefaces, hierarchy and color all in one. I have a new found appreciation for intentionally using a certain typeface to communicate a certain message.
