Category: Research

First Impressions? – Typography I

I honestly did not know what to expect when coming into Typo I because my knowledge about typography is pretty limited. If anything, the only thing I hoped to learn by the end of this module would be to understand what differentiates are good typeface from a bad one (and therefore learn how to defend my font choices because I always stumble with that when presenting my works to my lead designer at my previous workplace). 

So far, after the first couple of lessons, I think I am probably going to achieve what I had hoped to achieve by the end of this course and learn a lot more along the way? I guess in some sense I also forgot to take into consideration how types were created and it is pretty cool that for our first assignment, we would be researching on a particular typeface, learning about how it was created and how it affected society. I guess by the end of the whole semester, I would also learn to be a lot more sensitive as to how type is being presented. 

On the topic of the group presentation, our group is called Spaghetti Italy and we will be presenting on Comic Sans 😀

Typographer of the week: Jan Tschichold

Strangely enough, I have never heard of Jan Tschichold but I have seen the diagram of his canon for book design and had it explained to me before. The lead designer (basically the only full-time designer there) from my previous workplace had shown me a picture of this diagram and gave me a quick run-down on editorial design before tossing me an editorial project to work on. At that point in time, I had no formal education in design (I was basically on Google and Pinterest for tutorials all the time) so that had been an eye-opening experience for me. 

Anyway, back to the main topic.

It is amazing to learn of his history and how he got started in calligraphy, typography, and layout. Despite the fact that the essays are written and published in the 1930s, what Jan Tschichold wrote about is still applicable today and the influence of his works can still be seen in the work of designers today. 

It is also worthwhile to note his willingness to experiment and innovate: having been bored with the norm and sick of seeing the same layout everywhere (even if the trend only came about months ago and originated from him!!!!), he kept challenging himself to come up with more unique layouts. Perhaps this is something that we, as designers, should all adopt and work towards, constantly challenging the status quo and coming up with more new and exciting ways to do things. 

 

Type in the Wild

So uhm, the “place” in which I would be exploring the variety of type classification available is onboard a cruise ship. My parents had decided to bring me along for their short weekend getaway why not make full use of my time and complete this assignment while I am there?

While I would have thought that there would be a wide variety of typefaces being used onboard a cruise ship, the result is that there aren’t as many different type classification as I thought there would be. As seen in the poorly taken photos above, most of the typefaces found onboard can be simply classified as serif and sans serif (with more san serif typefaces), as well as a few decorative typefaces. From the signages around the ship to the ship programmes brochure (which I forgot to take a photo of oops), most san serif typefaces classifying under grotesque and humanist sans.

A possible reason as to why this is so might be because of when the particular place was discovered or built. In this case, this particular cruise ship is a relatively new one, having only been commissioned in 2013 and finished building in 2016. The heavy usage of san serif typefaces does reflect the current trend where san serif fonts are more popular and are seen as more modern as compared to serif fonts. Furthermore, the design of the interior of the ship would need to be cohesive and having a wide variety of typefaces might not allow for that to happen. Therefore, as compared to a place say maybe NTU or like Jurong Point, the variety of type classifications would definitely be a lot lesser.