Using Type book by Michael Harkins, published by AVA Publishing in 2010
Chapter 1 helps us to understand typography better. Typography has to be clear and in a way we have to notice it, although it shouldn’t distract us from the meaning. To separate typography from lettering we have to understand that typography is not handwriting, lettering, carved letters, signwriting, grafitti or making letters with objects like rubber bands for example.
We learn how to understand the design problem in Chapter 2. Before we start designing we have to identify our intended audience.
“Great design does not just communicate clearly but also effectively and efficiently. Knowing your audience, or more correctly, anticipating how your audience will perceive your work, may take some time to develop as a designer, but it is an aspect of design that should never be taken for granted either.”
Parallel with understanding the audience there is awareness of appropriateness. In thinking how appropriate our work is we have to consider things such as content, context, form, use, audience and self-authorship. For help we might use the research questions I listed in one of my blog post “New Chapter”.
There is more potential for expression when working with display types but it is also most noticeable aspect of the design. You have to put extra care into it because display type is most likely to remain in people’s minds.
“Try to avoid cliched or obvious visual associations. The car mechanic down the road doesn’t need a typeface assembled from spanners – you get the idea.”
Think about what is the intention of your design an choose the appropriate typeface. You may ask yourself “What is the intended purpose of this text typeface or display type?”. If you need to use 2 fonts make sure that there is enough distinction between them and for that reason don’t use two serif or two sans serif fonts together.
At the end you always want to balance a contrast of variants and have everything working harmoniously.
