Typography. What is it? And why should we care? Well, I used to think that too until recently. The truth of the matter is we encounter typography everywhere; books, computers, mobile phones, TV. Just as we learn that we should stop and take in the world all around us. We can do the same for typeface. According to Jamie Hearn “typography is the art of arranging type to suit its context, and the bedrock of all good design.” (Hearn et. al., 2019, p.53). Jaye Hannah, of CareerFoundry.com, says this “Typography is the art of arranging letters and text in a way that makes the copy legible, clear, and visually appealing to the reader.” (Hannah, 2023). So, in essence typography is a bigger deal than when we first thought. Designers use this knowledge to engage their audience. Therefore, knowing the audience as we learned in my prior blog sets up what typeface to use for which audience.

Before we start one important note that many designers will note is that the words typeface and font are used interchangeably and should not be because there are differences. I must admit I was (and from time to time) guilty of this mistake. Hearn points this out by explaining that “typeface describes a whole family of characters, regardless of size, or style, that share the same design features.” Whereas, “font describes a set of characters within the typeface that share a style.” (Hearn et. al., 2019 p. 52).

We could go down a rabbit hole about the anatomy and history of typefaces (serif, slab-serif, sans-serif, script, and display). Typefaces have been around for centuries and there are a lot of good material on their history. For now it’s safe to say there are many years ahead of me to learn more and choose wisely. However, for now I know that its best to stay away from the typeface Papyrus.

Comics Sans however, may need a rethink. Unlike my peer the “paragraph designer” (you know who you are) I’m a visual curator and one of my jobs is to ensure all our learnings are equally accessible for our employees. With that in mind I learned something new this week about typography. Did you know that according to Discovery ABA, 10% of the world population has Dyslexia. That’s about 780 million people! The British Dyslexia Association states that typefaces such as Comic Sans actually is easier for those with Dyslexia to read. An article in The Lawrentian, student newspaper of Lawrence University states “Especially due to its mimicry of the way humans instinctively write to make our natural inconsistencies more legible, Comic Sans optimizes readability.” (rukmini-raman, 2021). Something to think about before not using the Comic Sans typeface.

Mood Match

According to Grace Fussell of Envato Tuts, “Fonts that provoke a psychological reaction can be used to make a brand feel more trustworthy, friendly, or aspirational, with designers often turning to emotional fonts to give brand identities a powerful psychological impact.” (Fussell, 2024). All that to say certain typefaces and their fonts within evoke certain moods and reaction.

New to typography we were challenged to create a mood font demo. The challenge was to select 6 nouns. For each noun we needed to provide 3 different fonts to represent the chosen noun. All-in-all we would have 18 variations. However, before I set out to pick the fonts what nouns would I choose? Well for me it was simple. I’m an avid open water swimmer, rescue diver, and scuba diver. Therefore, I chose words of the ocean. More specifically, sea creatures large and small. They were dolphin, whale, shark, octopus, jellyfish, and starfish. After I picked my nouns carefully, I then wrote them out on my Remarkable notepad. Next to each noun I wrote 3 descriptive words. This would hopefully help me in choosing which typeface and font within I would use. After writing the noun and their descriptors, I sketched out roughly what I envisioned the font might look like (see image below). Then, once I was satisfied with the sketch, I went into Illustrator and came up with each of the fonts (see images below sketch).

In A Typeface Not So Long Ago…

For the next piece we were asked to create a “Type Specimen.” I’m like What??? I was quite intimidated at first because I wasn’t sure if I could pull this off. However, after looking at the plethora of examples provided, I was like “You got this!” But Tony what’s your heading got to do with this? Hold on, I’m getting there. So, I was looking for a typeface that spoke to me. Therefore, I began looking up one of my favorite movies Star Wars. Google: What typeface does Star Wars use? What I got back was Trade Gothic, Avenir, and finally, News Gothic. In researching my typeface I found out that George Lucas actually created the opening text crawl to mimic the text in two of his favorite films growing up: Cecil B DeMille’s Union Pacific (see below) and the 1940’s Flash Gordon Open crawl.

It turns out that the title uses a newer gothic font but the opening text crawl and the end credits use the News Gothic typeface. There you now have how this heading ties into this section. Once I had this I went into Illustrator (design tool of choice) and knew my theme had to be based around Star Wars. Along the way I found out that the movie and music industries used News Gothic too. With this in mind I used the free transform tool and create outlines to come up with my final type specimen for News Gothic.

Swag and More

The last part of this trip down typography lane was to create more business identity for branding. Given that today’s culture rarely uses paper, I’d thought it would be fun to continue the logo design I did for the Small Batch Kitchen. I created a business card, and 3 swag items (coasters, coffee/tea mug, and a water bottle) to continue their brand identity. I kept to the chosen green, brown, and white colors in the branding guide while showcasing one of their more popular items blueberry basil spread to bring in the blue color.

And Now for Something Completely Different

There’s this YouTuber Elle Cordova. When she’s not playing in her band, she’s doing this YouTube shorts. I happened to find this one about fonts (yeah I know it’s really typeface but hey enjoy). Knowing what I now know about typography (typeface vs fonts), I found these hilarious especially part 2 as Aptos is now the default “font” on my Microsoft Word documents. Enjoy!

Citations

Cordova, E. (2024a, January 23). Fonts hanging out. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/j7SByXWWVzU

Cordova, E. (2024b, January 30). Fonts Hanging Out Part 2. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/diN5s8M8MCA

Dyslexia Association, B. (2021). Dyslexia friendly style guide. British Dyslexia Association. https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide#:~:text=Readable%20fonts,may%20request%20a%20larger%20font.

Elias, M. (2023, February 26). 21 Dyslexia Statistics & Facts: How Common Is it?. Discovery ABA: At-Home & Center-Based ABA Therapy (No Wait List). https://www.discoveryaba.com/statistics/dyslexia#:~:text=Around%201%20out%20of%2010,of%20them%20receiving%20a%20diagnosis.

Fussell, G. (2024, February 16). The psychology of fonts: How to choose fonts that evoke emotion. Envato. https://elements.envato.com/learn/the-psychology-of-fonts-fonts-that-evoke-emotion

Hannah, J. (2023, May 10). Typography: What is it? The Complete Guide for 2024. CareerFoundry. https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ui-design/beginners-guide-to-typography/

Hearn, J. S., & Caldwell, C. (2019). Building Blocks. In Graphic Design For Everyone (pp. 49–71). essay, DK Publishing.

raman, rukmini. (2021, May 7). Comic sans and dyslexia. The Lawrentian. https://www.lawrentian.com/archives/1018385