alan crissey / graphic designer » Typography http://www.alancrissey.com A graphic designer in the Atlanta area, discussing anything and everything creative. Tue, 06 Oct 2009 04:00:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc en hourly 1 Helvetica. It works. http://www.alancrissey.com/archives/316 http://www.alancrissey.com/archives/316#comments Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:09:09 +0000 Alan http://www.alancrissey.com/?p=316 This
This is
This is my
This is my block
This is my block of
This is my block of Helvetica.

I just got through watching ‘Helvetica’, a documentary about the history and culture behind the font Helvetica. I actually learned quite a bit from the film. Some of the people interviewed I’ve heard of for so many years, such as Eric Spiekermann. And to see them talk about typography and graphic design was especially intimidating since many of them are German and Swiss and can speak better English than I can. But regardless, I will never look at the font the same again.

Even if you are not a graphic designer and you are reading this wondering what Helvetica is, or why you should care, it has had a major impact on Western culture. It is literally everywhere, for both good reasons and not so good reasons. It is a modern font and encompasses the modern age in its aesthetic and context. I have honestly not experimented with it that much. I’m not sure if that’s a sign of my immaturity as a designer or that I leaped ahead and am therefore more mature as a designer. I don’t know. But seeing the film and learning about this significant creation in my industry is making me think about revisiting it. And what may be more important than that would be for me to revisit typography in general. Maybe for my next website design, I will simplyl start with text only, and build around it. Such a simple idea, yet so mind altering. Maybe it’s just the refreshing change my approach needs.

A recommendation was given by one of the designers in the film for all of the inexperienced and/or bad designers out there. When in doubt, use Helvetica. At the worst, you will be using an aesthetically pleasing type face. I thought this was kind of funny, but then when I thought about all of the strip malls I had seen with signs loaded with logos using Papyrus and Comic Sans, I decided he was right. So yes – when in doubt, use Helvetica. But once you get the hang of it, expand and explore the use of other high quality fonts. That is, after you delete Papyrus and Comic Sans from your harddrive forever.

So if you want to see what I mean by Helvetica being completely ingrained in Western culture, go an entire day taking note of every time you see the Helvetica font used somewhere. Develop an opinion as to where you think it fits or doesn’t fit.

]]> http://www.alancrissey.com/archives/316/feed 2 Why Typography Matters http://www.alancrissey.com/archives/72 http://www.alancrissey.com/archives/72#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:37:08 +0000 Alan http://www.alancrissey.com/?p=72

Noone ever wants to be the one that makes this mistake.

My non-graphic designer friends laugh at me when I mention typography – the study of type. They think it’s ridiculous. I thought it was ridiculous as well, when I was in college and saw that there were two required typography courses that I had to take. However, I quickly learned not only how important good use of typography is, but also how much fun it can be and how powerful a tool it is. I came across this horrible typographical mistake today, which might cause you to have a little laugh and maybe have a bit more appreciation for us geeks who study typography and actually know how to use it.

If you haven’t caught it yet, I’ll point out the blunder – look at the ‘REGISTRATION’ line. It’s intended to say ‘FINAL REGISTRATION’, and either a ligature (which is a special character within a font set where two letters are sort of merged) was used for the FI, or, it was just kerned too closely (kerning is the space between the letters) causing it to look like an ‘A’, resulting in a very embarrassing, but funny, mistake. But what fun would the world be without mistakes like these?

Failblog.org is hilarious, by the way.

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