In graphic design, type, letters, and words are more than just language: they're art. As a graphic artist, your typography is essential to your personal style and your design's final message, purpose and tone. Bad typography will make your designs difficult to read and confusing to look at. But solid typography will catch and hold the attention of the viewer, and make sure your message gets across with clarity and skill.
Typography with too many fonts, bad letter spacing, and confusing alignment is so hard to read, your viewer will most likely give up before long. How far can you read into this poorly-designed paragraph before you quit?
Letter proportionsBy using a computer we can easily select a vast variety of lettering styles called fonts on ourcomputer
program. While using hand lettering we will use a very basic yet clear lettering style knownas Gothic Letters using stroke
uniform width.Lettering artists in Roman times discovered that if all letters were made with thesameproportionssomeletters
Look too wide and others would appear pinched.To illustrate, notice some letters look better wide, when too narrow a ‘w’ appears
pinched.And an S can appear too wide.If all letters were created to occupy the same amount of space, they would visually
appear crowded, pinched, or too wide. The ‘M’ and ‘W’ should be lettered a bit w i d e r than their height.Eleven letters look best
when they are of equal width and height.
Of course, this doesn't mean that all typography needs to be perfectly aligned, evenly-spaced, and cleanly-lettered. Masters of typography can break up text in surprising ways, obscure fonts behind textures and objects, or even use letters and words themselves as elements of art. Here are some examples of unconventional typography used in effective designs.
GEO Magazine
This hot air balloon is perfectly designed to be viewed from the bottom. The tight letter spacing helps the logo hold together as one image or idea. RedEye Newspaper
Challenging rules of alignment and line breaks, this logo for the RedEye newspaper puts the letter "R" on its own line, then the letters "ED" on the next. Still, the bold background color and attention to font size helps the viewer easily read the text. Eternal Flame Magazine
Although the model's head is covering up the name of this magazine, it's still easy to read. The "R" is almost entirely obscured, but we see enough of the "N" to make out the word. Plus, the phrase "Eternal Flame" is familiar to many people, helping viewers complete the puzzle. South Shore T-Shirt
This design uses a mix of capital and lowercase letters, a messy script font, and a wavy baseline. Still, the illustration works, held together by the whale element and a strong use of negative space. Abstract Dollar Design
Sometimes, typography can be used as an art element by itself. In this piece, the letters don't really communicate a clear message, but are used to help the eye travel across the page and give clues to the artist's message and purpose. |
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