Typography

This week our tutorial focused on typography and its importance in an image, so, I will be looking at what we learnt in class and some online research to help give me a greater understanding and idea of how I could effectively incorporate it into my infographic.

A first importance I got from the class was how helpful creating a grid for my infographic would be in terms of typography and the overall image. Firstly, by diving the page up (I’m thinking of 12 columns) and drawing a grid, it will allow me to have a more effective composition. I will be able to place the elements of my image so that it all aligns, for example, with my main header, I could decide to place it along 6 columns (rather than just randomly placing it in and hoping it looks okay). If I want to focus on typography, I could also also this grid to help with repetition.

The main points discussed were the font itself and its weight, size, tracking, leading and alignment. I will discuss the most relevant to myself. Firstly, the “font family”; as there are many variations of fonts which also have their own variations within themselves (bold, italics, default font), the properties of each font can be used to communicate. Secondly, visual hierarchy was an important aspect of typography. This can be demonstrated with a fonts size/weight, for example, a fonts size can be altered to increase its dominance; if it were an entire word, or particular letters. This is interesting to me as I would like to demonstrate effective visual hierarchy with my chosen words. Lastly, alignment. Alignment is essential in creating good composition, it helps our eyes find the entry point (our first focus) and direct our eyes from various points. Good alignment enables this process to be easier and more effective.

Another interesting element of typography is ’emotive’ typography. This is something I am currently planning to incorporate, especially as my topic is related to emotions. Emotive typography is where the letter form (and all its elements) is used for the design itself, as a main part of the image where it could be a dominant part of the design itself. Three parts are essential here, physicality, personality and layout; all of which works together to help pull the design together and give it different meanings.

Below are some images I found effective and emotive.

I especially liked this image, as although it isn’t only using typography, the words “Can I Play With Your Mind?” become much more empowered and effect with all the images elements together. I also think this type of font would be the most relevant to use for my design if I decide to play around more with images and want a simpler title, that makes the title captivating but not overpowering or too much with the rest of the images elements.

The above image is effective as it uses typography to convey meaning itself without needing additional support from other images. Each letter is broken, and continues to fall down and blur with the final letter, thus emphasising the idea of something fragile and broken, which the word itself means. The image beside it does a similar thing, using elements of typography to convey meaning only with the word.

The above image is one that also was shown in class, but I thought I would post it here alongside the other image as both have used words/typography to create an image with itself.

And lastly…

I liked this because it has used typography in a whole other way to create something very effective! The Jokers face has been created to obviously present him (green hair, blue-ish face, evil smile, purple background) AND it has been created by using his famous line “Why so serious? hahaha” to actually create the face. Although this isn’t something I would do OR be able to do, I found it a very interesting and effective example of a design which significantly uses typography.