This year I designed the materials with a vaudeville flair. I searched all over the Internet looking for the perfect font and finally discovered Boston Truckstyle. I wanted a font with some flourish, but nothing too extreme. Boston Truckstyle has great options and beautifully simple finishing touches.

Evrim Icoz Photography took the photo in the flyer above at the 2008 Portland Lindy Exchange. I removed a bunch of people from the background for a cleaner look.

The whole job uses black and Pantone 877 metallic silver ink. I have been debating about whether or not I should create a fake metallic effect for the web banners and the header for their website. What do you think?

I’ve also designed materials for the event itself. I’m still working on a poster and the program. I will finalize both once bands and venues are locked down, probably sometime in December. However, I have already designed tickets to the late night dances and the shirts for the event.

The tickets will be hole-punched at the door so attendees can keep them as a souvenir if they choose. Both the promotional and event shirts will be printed on several different shirt styles to appeal to different tastes.

What do you think of my designs? Would you change anything?

That said, I am going to try to do a better job even through the stress of it all. While I’m finishing up my entry on the history of the Roman alphabet, I thought it might be nice to share one of my freelance projects with all of you.

Without Further Ado…Coucou Bleu

Coucou Bleu is a vintage jazz band located in Portland, OR. Their tunes are inspired by artists such as Billy Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, but with a French influence in the arrangements. The band manager wanted a classy poster with a French feel. He also wanted it to be reusable for different dates and locations.

When I inquired about the origin of the name, he told me a similar band, L’heure Bleue (The Blue Hour), inspired it. The blue hour is the hour at twilight when the sky turns a deep shade of blue. Coucou was chosen to denote time as in a cuckoo clock and because there is a French jazz musician by the name of Django Reinhardt that wrote a song called Coucou.

The manager provided the photo which was taken by Evrim Icoz Photography and features the Portland skyline during the blue hour behind the lead singer. I searched through hundreds of Art Nouveau posters for inspiration. Although, the Art Nouveau period happened around 1890-1905, which was before this style of jazz existed, I felt it would kill two birds with one stone—create a vintage feel and give the poster a French quality. I experimented with different ways of combining Art Nouveau with modern photography. I finally settled on the feather border to refer to the cuckoo bird. It’s almost as if she has wings. I chose Eccentric for the headline font, which was originally issued as a caps-only type by The American Type Founders Company about 1898. I left the tan space at the bottom blank to allow them to write in the time, date and location as needed.

What are your thoughts?

Project | Typographically Represent a Cliché

Purpose

To understand the expressive quality of words in a phrase and explore type as a graphical element.

Exercise

Choose a common cliché such as “keep a stiff upper lip,” “smoke like a chimney” or “between the devil and the deep blue sea.” (Keep in mind that I am in the U.S. and these may not be clichés in your country). Typographically represent the cliché. You can create illustrations from the letter forms and use color if you choose. Avoid introducing other graphical elements—limit yourself to type.

Format

500px x 300px

Here is the version I did for my designing with type class at the Art Institute of Phoenix. I later turned it into a magazine spread for a 10K run.

What do you think of it? Is there anything you would have done differently?

David Airey’s newest blog Logo Design Love has been featuring various logos from many lesser-known blogs in his Logo Design Love Awards. I am happy to announce that my personal logo was nominated for this week’s competition. You can vote for me here.

If you care to read more about my logo these two posts are full of insights about my process and the choices I made:
Personal Logo Design Sketches
What’s Your Logo Font?

Happy voting!

Since I have already been working on the exercises in the book Designing With Type I figured that would be a good place to start. The third exercise in the book is about understanding different ways to arrange type: justified; flush left, ragged right; flush right, ragged left; centered and random. I am modifying the project slightly to encourage creativity. Consequently, we won’t be investigating the first four mentioned arrangements. If you don’t already have a solid understanding of them, I highly encourage you to learn all that you can.

Project | Random Type Alignment

Purpose

To experiment with random type alignment and how that decision can effect design, legibility and communication.

Assignment

Choose the typeface from the options below and arrange the corresponding text using random alignment. Use black or shades of gray text on a white background. Set the name of the typeface at a display size of your choice and the corresponding text at normal body text size—usually 14-point or below. Before you start, take a look at these alignment concerns: what you should avoid. On top of those concerns, keep the text running on simple horizontal lines—avoid rotating it or running it along a curved path.

You can use any font or any combination of fonts offered within your chosen typeface. The goal is to create a design that enhances the message of the text and is visually appealing.

Typeface Options

Garamond: get the text here
Baskerville: get the text here
Bodoni: get the text here
Century Expanded: get the text here
Helvetica: get the text here

Format

500px × 500px

My Solution

Of course I wouldn’t ask you to do an assignment without providing you with an example. I chose Bodoni since I did not find a use for it in my last exercise and it is probably my least favorite font on the list. I have my reasons, but my main concern is how the high contrast between thick and thin strokes makes Bodoni harder to read than the other options. In any case, I am glad I chose it. I have a new appreciation for Bodoni as a display face and can see how it could benefit me in future projects.

I spent quite a bit of time thinking about where I wanted line breaks to fall and how to randomly align without making it appear cluttered. The body text inspired a few of my decisions—like leaving additional leading around “between the thicks and thins” to enhance that contrast. The leading is loose throughout because the text told me to. I also chose to highlight a few of the words so the reader would understand their importance regarding Bodoni. What do you think of my design? Do you understand the flow of it?

Random alignment is only useful in specialized situations, however I feel it can really add personality to a design that the other text alignment options cannot. How do you feel about random text alignment? Do you think it has a place in design or would you rather see more traditional alignment options?

If you choose to participate in the exercise, please let me know where I can view your design with a trackback or by posting here.

The poster on the left caught my eye while I was searching for cabaret posters on Google Images. The hand-drawn typography is beautiful and the illustration is eye-catching, fun and simple. It reminds me of one of my favorite vintage prints: Le Frou Frou by Lucien-Henri Weiluc created in 1900.

The 2007 Nothing Like a Dame poster visually benefits from a lack of clutter adding information like location, date, time and sponsors might have caused. However, I wonder how beneficial it is to have a poster about an event when it excludes all of the details. I don’t even see a mention of a way to contact them for more information.

I’m not as drawn to the 2006 version, but I do think it is a good design in its own right. It also has interesting typography and a beautiful illustration. However, the thin font weight, overlapping shapes and white background makes it slightly more challenging for the eye to decipher what is going on (not hard, just slightly harder). That said, unlike the 2007 version, it is nice they found a way to include all the important information.

Nothing Like a Dame is an annual star-studded gala performance and event. Net proceeds from this one night event benefit the Phyllis Newman Women’s Health Initiative of the Actors’ Fund of America. You can read more about the 2006 and 2007 events on broadwaycares.org.

Unfortunately, I can’t find a mention anywhere about who designed these two posters. I am always a fan of giving credit where credit is due, so if you know that information, please share it with me.

What do you think of these posters? Do you enjoy hand-drawn typography like I do?

When I was searching for the perfect font for my logo, I wanted something inviting, somewhat feminine and dealt with the negative space between letters well — the k and y can cause problems in particular. I wanted a font with warmth — one that felt slightly personal. On the other hand, I did not want a script font. My personality is too structured for script.

I finally fell in love with Baker Signet. Its calligraphic influence combined with its roman structure spoke to me. Not surprising to see its handwritten quality when you note that it was designed by American calligrapher Arthur Baker. The serifs are small yet are the perfect finishing touch to the letterforms. The large openings on the a and e allude to my open nature and, when combined with the tight kerning, it helps represents my reserve to allow myself to be open to absolutely everyone. The sweeping descender on the y cradles the rest of karly and leads the eye back to the start of my name before moving on to my last name. The narrow set-width helps the overall shape of my name and keeps it from running too long.

As far as I can tell it only comes in one font weight even though I have read in several different locations that the bold version of the font was used in the Coke logo.

Not just bold but also oblique? I cannot find that version of the font anywhere, I guess I need to be Coke to be special enough to own it.

To help illustrate some of the concerns I ran into with my name in other fonts, let us take a look at it in the same fonts as my previous post.

Notice the similarities between the shape of Baker Signet and Adobe Garamond. They both have those large openings on the e and a, small set-width and low contrast between the thick and thin strokes. Although, Garamond is one of my favorite fonts, I felt it was not personalized enough for this purpose. Baskerville gives my name a much lighter feel, but my logo mark called for a slightly bolder font to help balance the weight of it. Bodoni starts to feel more masculine. I am not a fan of how my name looks in Century — those slab serifs make me think of a typewriter and lose the personal feel. As for Helvetica, it does not even begin to hit the mark of what I was trying to achieve. It feels very corporate and somewhat sterile.

This is not to say these were the only fonts I explored. In fact, I cannot even remember looking at these in particular when I did my original search.

What do you think of my choice? What font did you choose for your own personal logo? Why did you choose it?

1. I limited myself to the five classic typefaces the book discussed in great length: Garamond (Old Style), Baskerville (Transitional), Bodoni (Modern), Century (Egyptian/Slab Serif) and Helvetica (Sans Serif). The idea was to challenge myself by avoiding the thousands of display typefaces that could easily express the word just through the style of the typeface. Plus, it is nice to study these specific typefaces more closely.
2. I had my roommate choose the words for me. When I did this project in school, I got to select my own words. That often makes it easier, but as a graphic designer, I have found it is extremely rare that a company asks me to design a logo for them and lets me name their company whatever I like. Did I say rare? I meant that has never happened to me. Therefore, I felt I should practice with words someone else gave me.

Project | Expressive Words

Purpose

To typographically enhance the meaning of a single word.

Assignment

Select five words and explore their expressive quality by manipulating the letterforms. To achieve the desired effect, avoid simply repeating the words or creating an illustration from the letterforms. The best solutions not only enhance the word’s meaning but are clever and aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes an unexpected effect can be achieved when the typographic solution contradicts the meaning of the word, setting “big” with small type, for example.

The first word she gave me was bright. This one proved to be the hardest for me. I started by thinking about the word and reading multiple definitions. I could have gone with bright light, a bright idea, bright color or bright in terms of intelligence. As far as I was concerned, bright color was out because I had no clue how to represent that typographically in black and white. After sketching a few ideas, I settled on this solution. I think it can represent bright light, bright idea and intelligent — depending on how you interpret it. FONTS: Helvetica Neue 55 Roman and 35 Thin

My next challenge was charge. I really liked the idea of the letters working together to ram or charge at the “E” at the end of the word. I enhanced it more by playing with the weight of the letter to give an idea of greater force as you move across the word. Fonts: Helvetica Neue 37 Thin Condensed, 47 Light Condensed, 57 Condensed, 67 Medium Condensed, 77 Bold Condensed and 75 Bold

After my masculine battering through letters, she gave me bloom. I wanted this word to have a feminine quality to it. The type solution has actually given me a new love for Baskerville. Look at the beautiful shape of those letterforms. They feel taller than Garamond, which helps with the feeling of growth. They are also more feminine than both Century and Bodoni — Baskerville’s letters have a curvy nature, elegant brackets and beautiful balance between thick and thin strokes. Not to mention that asterisk looks almost like a floral dingbat. FONT: Baskerville Regular

I then moved on to lost. I must not have thought much of the word when she originally gave it to me because I had to have her remind me what it was. It was lost in my memory. I played around with the idea of taking parts of the letters away as if they were lost. I ditched that idea for a more legible solution. I tried the word the opposite way with LOS and T floating by itself. However, I started to think I was trying to communicate in Spanish. This arrangement appealed to me the most. The L does not seem to know where it belongs. I wonder if the meaning would come across if the L were missing all together. FONT: Century Regular

My final challenge was magic. My sketches included replacing letters with similar letter shapes — like two inverted Vs to make the M. However, I thought it would not be clear enough that the Vs were creating an illusion of the M. If the reader does not understand the point is the illusion, the concept is lost. I kept thinking magic makes me think of fanfare, wands, top hats and making things appear and disappear. However, I did not want to light the word up by surrounding it with asterisks. I finally came up with a solution where you might think the “agic” is appearing out of the M or disappearing into it. FONT: Adobe Garamond Regular

The only font I was not able to use was Bodoni. I did not like the feel it gave to any of the words she chose for me. That is not to say I think Bodoni does not have a purpose, I just did not find a use for it in this exercise.

What do you think of my solutions? How would you express the words differently?

I could probably vent for an entire blog entry about how poorly designed most graphic design books are, but I will just say: yikes! I cannot be the only designer that has a hard time reading a design book that is full of clutter and has little flow.

After rejecting book after book based on poor design, I finally settled on two typography books. As a graphic designer, I can never know enough about typography. Almost every design I do includes type in some way. On Saturday, I poured through the first of the books — Designing with Type: The Essential Guide to Typography Fifth Edition.

This book stood out among the other design books because of the ease and simplicity of its design. Moreover, it has been nine years since I took a basic typography class. I firmly believe that to excel in anything you have to have a solid grip on the basics. I feel that includes periodically relearning them. As it turns out, with my experience and knowledge, reading a basic typography book now offered me a chance to better understand what they were talking about when I originally learned about type classification and what to look for when seeking a “well-designed font.” It has never been any clearer.

They wrote the book to teach the fundamentals of typography. I figure many design programs across the country use it as one of their textbooks. There is even a chapter full of projects/exercises to help you understand legibility, creativity, and design expressions through type. I am doing each exercise myself — not because the ideas are new to me, but because it stretches my thinking and may lead to fresh ideas.

I also really enjoyed Designing with Type’s take on the history of type, especially the formation of the western alphabet. It is so easy to take the symbols that we call letters for granted. It makes you look at the alphabet differently when you have a sense of why the letters have the shapes they do.

I think anyone who uses type in their designs should read this book. If this review does not convince you, stay tuned for future blog entries that will give you a bit more insight into the book and the basics of typography.

Have you read Designing with Type? Would you recommend a similar book to me?