Social networks and text-based communications are becoming increasing popular, so how can you make something your own or give meaning to what you say with these boring computerized letters? By making a new font choice, changing the font size, and color choice of course! These choices you make is know as Typography. Typography is all around us whether you’ve taken notice to it or not. (Just because you don’t notice it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist!) Think about what catches your eye on a sign when you pass by or some company’s logos. Yup! All different ideas of typography. This is an efficient way of catching the reader’s eye and getting them interested in the reading.
It wasn’t until a week to two weeks ago that I became aware of this and started taking notice once we learned about the topic in English class. I always noticed the different fonts and sizes, but I never put any meaning to it or related it to the message being conveyed. One advertisement that really plays off color is skittles. “Taste the Rainbow” being their slogan, they use the colors to stand out and support their message. A skittles advertisement can be seen with this link, http://adsoftheworld.com/files/images/skittles3.jpg I’m sure you can think of other popular ads and companies that have very distinctive ads or logos to you because of the font, colors, etc that they use.
One font we paid particular attention to was Helvetica and how widely used it is on numerous signs and ads. I live just 45 minutes outside New York City, so this font is very familiar to me. It is on every corner to identify street names, where the subways are, and store names. It is a very readable font that does stand out, so it is indeed very appropriate in the busy city where it may be easy to miss things. However, I do not agree with the companies that are changing their image to include Helvetica. Maybe I’m just sick of seeing it and would rather gaze upon another font, but I also think companies should have their own identity and not all conform to the style of Helvetica. There are plenty other fonts that can accomplish the same thing especially when paired with the right colors. One company that falls culprit to this is the clothing store Gap. This link shows their old design on the left and the new one on the right, http://www.unconventionalbranding.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/gap-logo-re-branding.png Which one do you like better?
Typography is a great way to make what is being said more interesting meaning people will probably pay attention more, or actually listen to the message. It is a really neat topic with endless possibilities.
By: Heather Britt
By: Heather Britt
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