Thursday, October 9, 2014

Diving deep into type.. (or just scratching the surface)



I love Type Wolf. I think I have learnt more on typography and fonts in the last one month than I have in many years. I am starting to analyse and justify my various font choices rather than picking something that just 'looks good' or 'feels right'. The texture, the colour. The context.

Why doesn't a Garamond work in large sizes? Does Meta work better than Helvetica?  Why is Lexicon the most expensive font? Why is Futura the most popular and most unpopular? Did we know it was Wes Anderson's and Stanley Kubricks' favourite font?  Why the global outcry when Ikea switched from Futura to Verdana?  Why does this fascinate me?




Most of the fonts popular amongst designers are not free, and some really pricey, but there are quite a few brilliant free options to explore as well.

But it's very important to have an understanding on why a certain font works for a particular project, vs another for something else. The history and evolution of the font, the influences. Subtle semiotics, but  it effects the overall project look and experience. We spoke about this in detail in my course on Typography at Central Saint Martins. We had an interesting assignment where we were given a set of projects and we had to choose fonts for each of them, and the reasoning behind choosing that font. Probably the hardest assignment, but the most fun.

On a separate note, I'm loving this brush pen from Atlantis, and the seemingly endless summer Saturdays. 






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