Tag: Typography

Final Design: Typographic Book Cover

Jasmine Pointer / / Final, Project One, Typography

Paperclips book covers

 

I decided to present my typeface on a typographic book cover design. As the type was made up with paperclips I thought the most obvious title for the book would be that.

I kept the cover simple using text only as I have seen others like it that were really effective and wanted to try it myself. The typeface has a lot going on anyway so I felt it would be too crowded with other images.

The main issue I had was deciding on a background colour that didn’t clash with the colours of the paperclips but I feel this beige/pink colour works well. I’ve included my name where the author name would be and to also include some uppercase lettering of my type. However, I think that it would have been better in another font to keep the attention on the main title. Keeping the shadows around the paperclips was a good idea as now it gives it a 3D look and really makes them stand out.

I’ve also designed the spine of the book and the back cover, which is a basic layout for information such as the blurb, publisher, etc to be added to. I felt I needed to include this in the design to show it clearly as a book cover design.

Other type work

Jasmine Pointer / / Project One, Typography

As I originally wanted to create a type by hand, I had a go at this by drawing an Alice In Wonderland font that I found on dafont.com (click here). I believe this is the font used in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland movie. I like both Alice in Wonderland and Tim Burton’s style so this really appealed to me. However, although I really liked how it turned out, I wasn’t sure how to modify it to make it my own. I had ideas such as to turn the letters into something like these:

project_24_item_76

9055b6f018d8b82f8310000c892ff10c But in the end I decided against it and to stick with my  paperclip idea, but I still wanted to include it in this blog.

 

 

 

 

Mockups

Jasmine Pointer / / Project One, Typography

In today’s workshop I added my existing typeface to a PSD mockup to see what my type would look like when used in a design. With the only letters I’ve created so far I made this:

mockup-jamI’m not quite sure how I feel about this presentation. I will be looking into other ways I can present my typeface in order to showcase it well, such as on a poster or book cover. I will create more letters so I’m able to present the type with more thought.

 

 

Work In Progress

Jasmine Pointer / / Project One, Typography

After deciding I wanted to create a type by hand out of physical objects, I then sat down to think up some ideas. I came up with a few ideas for objects I could use including feathers, pencils, paper clips, paper shreds or leaves. I decided to go with paper clips and had a go at attaching several together and shaping them into letters. This is what I got:

With this I decided it was too basic and therefore I transferred the images to Photoshop to turn them into letters for fonts.

I did this by removing the background of the images, leaving the paper clips, with the background eraser tool. This made them look a lot more appealing and it allowed them to stand out. This is the result:

 

I think in order to appreciate the style of this type I will need to create the whole alphabet but editing them has made a good difference. I will be editing them further to perfect them (the editing is patchy and needs sorting) and I also want to play around to see what changes I can make to them.

Modernism

Jasmine Pointer / / Lectures, Project One, Research, Typography

International Typographical Style: Modernism Lecture

Todays lecture talked a lot about Helvetica and the varied views different designers have on it. I’ve always looked at Helvetica to be a plain, simple and dull typeface. However, after seeing the work of Josef Muller Brockmann, I changed my mind.

  • beethovenHis design is so simple yet effective by the way he has used Helvetica. He uses no uppercase lettering which creates a certain style and image. The way that ‘beethoven’ has not been made a big deal for example, by blowing it up, it has drawn more attention to it. The background design also draws attention to it by the way it is shaped. I love the clarity of this poster and it’s minimalism is refreshing.

Josef Mullar Brockmann, 1955, ‘Beethoven’

We also watched an extract from ‘Massimo Viginelli: Film Helvetica’. Viginelli explains how he disagrees that type should be expressive and this is why he likes Helvetica. However, I disagree with him as I feel that, especially with the range of type there is these days, all type is expressive and has a certain effect on a design.

However I do like what Brockmann has done with his design and I think I will try to incorporate my own typeface into a minimalist design like this to see if I can create a similar effect.