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Digital Media Productions
Typography
What is typography?
To first learn about typography and how it's used I first had to learn what it exactly is and what typography really means. I did that by searching up a good and clear definition that explains what typography is,was and can be.
According to Wikipedia as Google's best answer to my question, typography is "the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line spacing, letter spacing, and spaces between pairs of letters".
Using my past knowledge, experiences and now learnt information from my research on typography, I have created a few showcase examples by describing four different words using four different fonts that really mirror their meaning but in typography. I have posted the image below
As you may notice each word is described perfectly by its own font, yuck is very blurry and ugly; obsessed has a very straight lined perfect font which makes you think the person who created the font was quite "obsessed" with perfecting it, cosy looks hand written and more child-like and giving it a more of a familiar vibe, and freezing looks like the text was left outside during a cold winter night and froze.
Although it may not be noticeable I have actually changed some of the kerning of the letters to get them more closer or further from each other in each situation. I did this by using the kerning slide/counter on the right side of photoshop (as shown below)
The pt counter helped me find the exact kerning size I wanted between the letters and by clicking, holding and sliding the mouse, helped me play around and experiment with all the possible sizes I would need to see to find the perfect one for each individual font.
Next, using my knowledge and skills I have learned, I have decided to recreate the manifesto, digitally using typography to focus on what really matters in it. At first I have created a black and white version that looked like this:
I was quite happy with it, as it was simple and easy to understand but it felt like it was missing something, something that would make it even more readable and understandable but also easier to focus on the main goals and that was color. My main goal was to then add color to the manifesto to make it pop more and to specifically highlight the words that meant the most in the manifesto which ended up looking like this:
In my opinion this looks perfect, as it contains everything the manifesto did but with more highlighted words that are easy to scheme over and understand. The repetition of the word "we" also helps the reader understand that "We" are the ones that feel this way and they should too as it is a good message.
For the rebel against ideas I have also thought of using the color red that most times indicates a sense of failure or bad or something wrong for the word "g00d" which reads out as good, this furthermore showcases that you should indeed rebel against the norm and the average ideas of what is normally good and what is bad.
I have decided to go around Cambridge city and take photos of numerous places that display different typographies. I took around 30 photos, unfortunately they got lost and the photos below are all I could find from that day
In the first image you can see there is a structure like a statue/monument built in Parker's Piece Park. The monument displays numerous sentences all in different languages all in different fonts just highlighting not only the differences in all the langages found in Cambridge but also the meanings of the words like the word " University" has the same font as Cambridge University does hence creating familiarity for those who may not be from Cambridge and are visiting.
In my opinion the fonts used for this monument are very friendly and easy to read which is very helpful and quite heart-warming for toursits and people of other nationalities
In the second image there is a storefront. This store showcased something very interesting to me that you don't see quite a lot. The font used on the blue sign is the exact same font that could be seen on the black rain cover. This is an interesting fact as it showcases somewhat of a stability and organization of the store when most stores like this do not actually have the same font everywhere and look quite disturbing/hectic and all over the place
The font use showcases a very calm and serious tone whilst the use of kerning in between letters in the sentence "mini market" makes it more light-hearted and fun therefore conveying a welcoming feeling when reading
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