TYPOGRAPHY AND CITIES

Last blog of the semester. I've enjoyed finding images and writing about them! It's been an interesting experience (and my first blogging experience, too). So, here we go.

I came across a really cool web site called SHOW US YOUR TYPE, which is a project about type and cities. They started the project to provide a creative platform for designers to share their talents and explore cities from a different perspective. Here's the website. http://www.showusyourtype.com .

It seems that they put out an "issue" every so often that exhibits typographic design posters of a specific city. The ones they have on the web site right now are Barcelona, Beirut, Berlin, Cairo, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Kingston, London, Melbourne, Moscow, New York, and Rio de Janeiro. The current city for which they just finished taking submissions (on Nov. 23) is for Tokyo. It seems that anyone can enter, and they provide the exact specifications.

There are many posters for each city, and they are really fun to look through! I'm going to post the ones that are my favorites for each city. These are the ones that caught my eye either because to me they portray the feeling of the particular city, because I love the typography, or because I love other design elements including color, contrast, emphasis, etc. In some cases there were so many great posters that it was REALLY hard to pick a favorite!

Here they are:

 BARCELONA, designed by Ana Areias. The decorative typography appeals to me SO much, as do the colors!

 BEIRUT, designed by David Gutiérrez - I like the illustrative graphics and colors (and I like tabbouleh!).

BERLIN, designed by Remy Sanchez. The different colored photos and the letters of BERLIN made from the negative space is a cool approach.

CAIRO, designed by Bosco. I LOVE the simplicity and minimalism of this Swiss style poster!

 HONG KONG, designed by Law Siu Yin. I love the beautiful colors swirling through the letters, and the flowering blossoms on the tree branches seem very "Hong Kong." It's gorgeous.

 ISTANBUL, designed by Eyüp Ugramaz. I like the typeface and the fact that it's all lower case. Also the brightness of the greens and lighter blues have a neon effect against the dark sky, giving it bright, positive energy.

LONDON, designed by Cake. I almost chose another one that had a double-decker bus and simple typography, but I just couldn't get over the amazingly interesting typography in this one.

KINGSTON, designed by Juan Medina. Very Jamaica, at least I think so. The colors and images are great, and the symbols appear to have cultural significance.

 MELBOURNE, designed by George Skalides. Again, I love the simplicity of this because of its Swiss style  approach and because of the kangaroos!

 MOSCOW, designed by Julio Martinez. The delicate letters are shaped (I believe) to look like Russian glass ornaments. Absolutely beautiful.

NEW YORK, designed by Petr Kay. Very hip and striking design. I love the severe contrasts in weight (and obviously black and white), and the three dots for the O is a cool decorative element.

 RIO DE JANEIRO, designed by Michaël Carreira. Rio is supposedly a very fun, partying city, and this image is beautifully expressed through everything about this poster!

Here is the page that tells how you can participate. http://www.showusyourtype.com/participate.php Too bad the deadline for TOKYO has passed, but I'm sure they will open it up soon for another city! It's a fantastic project! I would love to try to design one for the next city, whatever it will be! Ciao!

FREE FONTS if you want.

The homework in my typography class this week was about free fonts. We were to look for free fonts, find a "good" one, and create a document using it. We answered questions about where to find free fonts, the quality and quantity available, and so on.

What I found was that many free fonts aren't all that good in terms of quality OR that there is only one weight and style available at no cost and you have to pay to get the entire set. Occasionally you'll find something pretty good. I found one on dafont.com called Roboto, and it seems like a good, clean sans-serif font that actually comes in 16 different weights and styles from thin to black, bold and italic. I haven't tried printing with it yet, but I'm curious to see what it looks like printed. I won't attach the document here because it's too big.

The coolest website I've found that has interesting fonts is called Lost Type Co-op - here is the link: http://www.losttype.com . It's the first of its kind pay-what-you-want foundry. It was founded by Riley Cran and Tyler Galpin. All of the funds go directly to the designers of the fonts. Lost Type doesn't take any cut of the sales and hold no funds. You can pay whatever you want, and even enter $0 if you can't afford to pay (students, for example).

The selection isn't very large, but there are some really interesting fonts. Some are very vintage-looking, some are elegant, some are script fonts, some are display fonts. I actually used one called HABANA for one of my projects in typography.

I also like the way in which they display the fonts on the site. Here are a few examples:

I am amazed at how many typefaces are available to us today. I can't imagine what people who lived hundreds of years ago would think if they saw what things are like today. It's pretty mind-blowing!

Paula Scher ROCKS!!!! (Or, are we still spelling it "RAWKS?")

I was inspired by Sidney's presentation on Paula Scher today. I didn't realize she designed SO many album/CD covers!

I decided to check it out. I have all of the CDs below!

CHEAP TRICK! One of my all-time favorite bands! She designed this and several other Cheap Trick album covers, maybe all of them! Awesome.

RADIOHEAD! Now this really does look like her work! Love Radiohead. She designed this one called "Hail to the Thief," and I think she also designed "In Rainbows." Again, very cool.

BOSTON! Now this really goes far back! I saw this during the presentation. I had no idea Paul Scher designed it. I've always thought it was a cool album cover. The colors are fantastic!

I'm really impressed with Paula Scher as an extremely influential designer. I WISH I could design CD covers! That kind of work is going to become fairly obsolete as we move more into the digital music age. But, you never know!

OXYMORON WARS

I'm really excited about the classes I'll be taking in future semesters. This semester has been great, and I am looking forward to learning more!

One of the kinds of graphic design that interests me is moving type. It's also a bit daunting, but that's probably because I have no idea how to do it yet.

This is a great example of a former Parkland student's kinetic type project. I think it's brilliantly creative! I only hope that I can design something half as cool. I hope you enjoy watching the way the words and illustration (mostly words) move and fit the message. I think it's really fun to watch. :)

Kinetic Type Project

What's on the MENU?

In my typography class we are currently designing a menu for a new local restaurant. It's really exciting because they are going to choose one of our designs and use it for their actual menu! As part of the research we have been finding different menus and pinning them on our pinterest board. I thought I would post a few of my favorites and talk about what makes them good in my opinion.

This one is designed by Erin Jang. I love the square layout, which is a bit unusual. The organization is great, and the colorful, whimsical illustrations give it a cool, creative quality. The gray loops and vertical lines add just enough to contain each section, and the black shapes containing the categories work really well too. Overall, I really like this design a lot!!

This menu for Bill's Restaurant was designed by Kyle White. It's a fan and a menu in one, which is really creative! It also makes it easy to hold, so it's functional. Again, the square design is appealing to me, and the colors and quirky art on the back make it feel bright and happy. It's really well organized, each category in its own box of a different color. Love this one too!

This is a menu for 50s Prime Time Cafe, and the first thing I thought of was The Jetsons, especially the shapes and colors! That is the primary appeal for me. It's not one of the easiest to read, and the information could be a lot better organized, but it's just plain cute and nostalgic.

There is a lot that goes into designing a menu, as I'm finding out. The main things are to capture the mood of the restaurant and organize the information so its readable. Hierarchy is a huge consideration as well. Obviously I'm attracted to the colorful ones the most, so it's too bad the one we're designing in class has to be black and white. However, I've got some ideas and have begun sketching them out for our first critique for this project. I'm going to be paying a lot more attention to menus when (or if) I find the time to go out to eat in the next few weeks!

Bon appétit!

Fun with Guerrilla Marketing

I'm currently taking Advertising 101, and our final assignment will be on guerrilla marketing.

Basically, it is an alternative advertising strategy focusing on low-cost, high-yield, unconventional advertising tactics, often very imaginative/creative with the element of surprise. The idea is to make a lasting impression and create great amounts of social buzz about whatever is being advertised.

Here are three good examples.

The first one is for the HBO series TrueBlood. Very witty and creative. I don't know where this is located, but it's pretty funny and memorable!

The next one is an advertisement for a rock radio station. It catches your attention, definitely! Silly, creative, humorous, memorable.

 Finally, and my favorite of the three, is the bench made to look like a partially unwrapped Kit Kat bar. The bench DOES look like a Kit Kat bar! Someone probably noticed that and came up with this idea. Or, the bench was constructed to look like one intentionally. In any case, it's bold, memorable, funny, unexpected.

After looking into guerrilla marketing a little bit, I think I'll enjoy the assignment for my advertising class. However, I have to actually come up with five different tactics for a store, which won't be easy!

I think guerrilla marketing may be a form of advertising I sort of like (I don't tend to like most advertisements in general). I like the ingenuity that's necessary to design them.

CUDO PRO SHOW - And the FIRST PRIZE AWARD goes to.....

CUDO PRO SHOW

Today I went to Indi Go Gallery to see the CUDO (Champaign Urbana Design Organization) PRO SHOW, an exhibit of graphic design pieces by professional designers in the local area. It was quite impressive and enjoyable! 

I apologize for the quality of the photo and the description. However, I wanted to post the winning piece, which is really pretty cool. The illustrative design is brilliantly clever and the message is really easy to read from it. So simple, yet it probably took the designer a LONG time to get the shapes and curves just right. I like the typefaces he chose - simple, easy to read, modern but classy. It's definitely an eye-catcher! 

It has some elements of Swiss/international style - straightforward, to-the-point, simple, abstract (somewhat), symbolic, only the totally necessary elements are there. The only thing I can think of that isn't really typical of Swiss style in this poster is that it's pretty much symmetrical. I love the simplicity, the minimalism, the stark contrast. There were a lot of really great posters and other pieces of graphic design, though, and it's hard to say how they chose this for the first place award, but I think it's deserving of it.

The show closes this Tuesday (Oct. 29), so if you haven't had a chance to see it, better hop to it if you don't want to miss it!