Regardless of the context in which it is used, typography plays a huge role in our everyday life. Especially in our generation where technology is reaching new heights, its only becoming more and more apparent how profound of an impact that typography makes on us on a day-to-day basis, whether it be on an iPhone application, e-mail, a website, street sign, a book, etc. Its impossible to deny its existence, but the key here is the effectiveness of its use. As a graphic designer I’ve seen many beautifully designed documents as well as many poorly designed ones. A well-designed document should draw the reader into the text, or at the very least, not put them off reading, no matter what type of media.

Typography in Learning

One of the main ways we use typography in our daily lives is education. Schools rely on heavily on the use of printed type on a daily basis to educate their students all over the world. From students simply learning to read and write to college students striving to earn higher education, type helps to make this all possible.

Typography between Friends and Family

Beyond spoken language, typography has always played a role in personal relations between people, whether it be through the use of handwritten notes, birthday cards, friendly e-mails, or even scrap booking. Although we may not always think of these as normal uses of typography in terms of design the very nature of typography and design is communicate so with that being said, this is a very successful use. Typography in personal communication gives people control of how their communication will look and even the feeling that could be transferred though the medium.

Typography in the Workplace

In the business place, typography plays a very important role in day-to-day operations. From simple correspondence between e-mails or letterheads, business cards, e-newsletters, or even blog posts like this one, typography helps lay the foundation for the way this information is presented between co-workers, clients, or even complete strangers who are recently finding out about you. A uniform typeface throughout a company’s stationery can help create a voice and a sense of consistency for the way it is represented to others.

Another important use of typography within the workplace of course is marketing. The importance of trade and the communications that are needed for trade to exist are all due to the use of the right type. Advertising and a connection to the customers both rely of how the product information is showcased. The wrong kind of type can cause a product promotion to fail in the consumer market. A good example of this would be the Coca Cola typeface. Regardless of where you are in the world, the Coke typeface is recognized all over. This is due to clever use of typeface and strong execution. Whether or not you happen to drink Coke, I’d be willing to bet if you saw their logo you’d know what it is almost instantly, and this is great use of typography.

Taking all of this into consideration, pay closer attention to your surroundings and see if you notice how much typography is a part of our daily lives. Although it might not all be good, because there is definitely bad design out there, look around and take in how typography is designed around us to present information. Look at an ad and try to experience how the typography is intended to make you feel, or look at a street sign and consider that someone designed it to make your life just a little easier.

The past few weeks I have been researching for a major motion graphics piece contracted by one of our clients. After a while I noticed all effective works had a very clear and crafted style, in concept and cinematography. Exhibit A

Every stylistic aspect of motion graphics needs to aid in the feeling and message of the piece. Everything from the muted colors to the split screen shots helped create the mood of wonder and allow the viewer to become more engaged with the piece. It sounds obvious but its  surprising  how little it is used in application. Motion graphics are still riddled with stock images and white backgrounds, not to mention the abuse of gradients and drop shadows.  The main reason for using motion graphics in the first place is because of its amazing ability to convey information visually.

My best bit of advice, When doing research on different styles jot down observations you notice . What is the color scheme? Muted or contrasting? what types of shapes are reoccurring? Are most the shots wide or close? How does the camera move from one point to the other? If you have to go, back and watch an animation frame by frame(it really helps). A great way to create better design is to understand how to look at design better.

I stumbled on this interesting piece of typography the other day while cruising around through Behance Network. This collective of found objects make up the typeface entitled, ELEKTROTRASH, was created by California-based graphic designer, Alex Varanese. In no way is this anything you’d consider a traditional typeface, but its a very clever manipulation of ordinary objects used to communicate an idea. The examples included are a display some really nice ways in which he’s put these together into compositions. How will this typeface affect the way you view your everyday surroundings?

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Typeface: Alex Varanese

A game based on typography you say? Where do I sign up!? Think you know your Arial from your Helvetica, your sans from your sans serifs? Then step up to the plate. With three levels of game play from the ease-yourself-in, ‘Somewhat Difficult’ through to the incredibly challenging ‘Exceedingly Difficult’, there’s lots of fun to be had for novices and typographic experts alike. I’m not sure how many of you saw my post with the original Font Game, but this new version puts this font-filled action in the palm of your hands via the new iPod application! Check out the beautifully designed Font Game by John Boardley, Justin Stahl and Kari Kari Pätilä.

Go ahead, press your luck! See if you can beat me.

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Application: Font Game

Okay, so I was searching around this morning through some of my regular websites and came across a very interesting article that got me really thinking about typography on the web. A common problem I have is writing CSS and designing the type as I’d like it to be presented on the screen to the viewer. So you can imagine how insane of a task it might be for type designer who is actually crafting the fonts. There is a big difference between designing typefaces for print and the web; pixels behave differently than blobs of ink on paper. Typefaces for the Web need different qualities. “The bigger problem is all of the technology that delivers the font to the viewer. The website is delivered by one cluster of hardware to another, often with a different operating system, different browser and, in some cases, different pieces of software. That’s a very long chain. The number of variations is almost bottomless, and the results are unreliable at best.”

Imagine that you are a super-successful movie director, who’s been given hundreds of millions of dollars and lots of whiz-bang technology to make a cinematic epic. Sounds good? Not once you are told that people will have to watch it on fuzzy old black and white television sets.

The new publishing world of pixels presents striking complications to displaying fonts on the Web, according to a recent New York Times article. Browsers grow; eyes get strained; fonts become unclear and unappealing. As the Web world has evolved, typographers have worked to develop new tricks to fashion fonts for computer screens while preserving the craft’s rich history and nuance. For instance, if typographers “make enclosed spaces, like those in an ‘a’ and ‘e,’ bigger than they need to be in print.”

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Reference: All Top
Article: New York Times
Photo Credit: Fotolia