Fontopoly

This poster was made by London based graphic designer, Timba Smits for an exhibition called, "Go Font Yourself." I wanted to do a bit of research on this poster because the way that it was created made it look like an aged boardgame from the 1950's, which is what the artist intended. I think it would be great if a board game like this really existed-I for one would purchase it instantly. The poster was designed for the fictional board game, fontopoly, which is a parody of the popular children's board game that we're all familiar with, Monopoly. With squares like Meta Street, Eurostile Station, and the Palatino Circus, this board game seems like a good representation of the varieties of typefaces that exist and the most popularly used ones like Frutiger.

Fontstaches

I fell in love with this immediately when I found it while I was doing my daily lurking on typography blogs. I feel like this poster captures the distinctive personalities each typeface would have if it were an actual person-with a mustache!! I just think this poster was creatively made because we're all used to typestudies that show off the popular characters of the alphabet but what about the parentheses and brackets!?! This is a fun way of showing the varying stroke weights ands contrasts in each typeface. My favorite mustaches of the group include:Mr. Goudy Old Style, Mr. Didot, and Mr. Big Caslon. They seem like they would be the lives of the dinner party if there was one!

Elements of International Typographic Style

One movement I learned about through my research for Project#2, A Survey of Typographic History, was the International Typographic Style or also known as the Swiss Style. It's also known as the Swiss Style because it originated and became most popular in Basel, Switzerland. Designers most associated with this movement are Armin Hofmann and Emil Ruder.

The design pieces from this movement were minimalist, objective, and ordered in a way that made the copy compliment the accompanying image.

Elements that were emblematic of this movement at the peak of it’s popularity, mainly the 1950’s until the early 1970’s were:

Asymmetrical layouts
Strict use of a grid
Geometric abstraction in layouts
Fondness for negative space
Flush left and ragged right copy
Use of sans-serifs typefaces

Here are some examples:



Both of these posters were crafted by Armin Hofmann.

Gerald Holtom

Another discovery I made during my research on my history of typography project was about the invention of the peace symbol.

I never really thought about how the peace symbol came to be in American history, but it has a really interesting background. The peace symbol was originally designed by Gerald Holtom, a british graphic designer in 1958 for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). The inside of the circle is a combination made up of the semaphore letters N and D (for Nuclear Disarmament), meaning the flag signaling system.

It's interesting to see how a logo for an organization in Britain can be reinterpreted as a symbol of peace in America.

The typeface formerly known as...

While I was doing research for my project on the history of typography I discovered a lot of interesting facts about the time period I picked. Originally, I picked the 1960s-1990's because I've always had an affinity for the 1960's (minus the racial segregation and assassinations). Since I was paired up with a partner, I decided to take the first fifteen years of our time period and my partner took the later half of the period. Hopefully most of us are familiar with the typeface, Helvetica, but who really knows about the history of how this typeface came to be so universally used.

^that's helvetica.

^that's helvetica being used for all the advertisements for American Apparel stores.

Once you realize what helvetica looks like, it's really hard not to notice where it's being used.

While I was immersing myself in the history of typography I learned that Helvetica was invented in a type foundry in Switzerland by Max Meidinger in 1957. It was originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, it's maker changed it's name to Helvetica, latin for Switzerland, so that it could be more attractive to international typographic markets. Helvetica was designed as a renovation of a grotesque typeface from the 17th century called Akzidenz Grotesk. Helvetica was considered the typeface for the modern age because of the balance of counter space and positive space in each letter.


In my opinion, Helvetica is just pretty to look at :)

An interesting analogy

Typefaces are the clothes words wear.


The accompanying image challenges this analogy. This analogy creates an alternative perception of the function of a typeface. The poster however demonstrates how I feel about a typeface.

It's more of a body type than an optional item like clothing. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes but essentially we all have the same parts. This is how a typeface is as well, they come in all different types of variants, some are serifs some are sans serifs but essentially they all have the same basic elements.

Font Conference

CollegeHumor.com is a website known for it's witty and humorous articles that are relevant to college students and their college lifestyles. The website features hottest girls on college campus, craziest photos, and articles like roommate revenge.

College Humor is also known for its funny videos that are usually parodies of current issues, songs, or celebrities. This video, called "Font Conference" is about a conference that is supposed to be structured like United Nations forums but instead of countries being represented its various typefaces.

The different typefaces are personified as humans with personalities that either match the name of their typeface or match the connotative association that is in turn personified as a person. An example of this is Baskerville Old Style is depicted as an old man. This twist to this is that Comic Sans is the hero of the story!

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.