Form and Content 6

In this form and content, I will discuss why these photos are examples of good typography and why the other set of pictures are bad typography.   On the Coca-Cola can photo,  you can see the clean design of the bottle silhouette.  The text fits nicely inside the white image and doesn't disrupt from the rest of the can design.  In the photo of the mexican chicken poster, they have done a good job of balancing text and photography.  Their choice to use a sans- serif text was wise because a serif font would have been more distracting.  The only think I would change is the amount of space between the hat and the text.  In the photo of the liberty bell,  you can see that they used a variety of fonts, that look hand drawn, to write the word 'liberty' in different languages.  It is tightly squeezed and twisted, but it has an interesting, artistic design.

I chose these photographs as examples of bad typography because each one of them has something that could be changed to make them stronger.  In the 8/12 sign,  the title and subtitle look like they were made with word art, very tacky. The gradient makes the letters hard to read.  Also, the vertical coca-cola band is difficult to read and would look stronger if it were horizontal and placed at the bottom of the sign.  The Playa Inn sign is not very interesting to me.  They used a serif and a sans- serif  font on the same sign. The orange outline does not go all the way around the exterior of the sign, the bottom is left off.   The Dinosaur Tracks sigh is obviously an example of bad typography, the letters aren't even the same size.  They are clearly hand painted and cheaply made.  I think with a better sign, they might just get more customers in the middle of the Arizona desert. 

Same artist, inspiration for other posters

These three ads were created in a series by Jesse Kaczmarek for the Bahamas vacation agency.   The point he's trying to get across to the viewer is to get out of the cold, and travel to the warm Bahamas.  His well known Bahamas logo has the teardrop, lemon, and circle shapes around the name of the country and this is how I recognized that these posters were made by the same artist. 

The first one, in blue, says "Bundle Down," which suggests the viewer should get out of the cold and go snorkeling in the ocean.  The shades of blue in the signature teardrop, lemon, and circle shapes are closely fitted together to represent water and have to bodies with scuba gear diving into the water.  The second ad, in green, says "trade 18 layers for 18 holes," which suggests to the the viewers get out of the cold and go golfing.  The same shapes in the green shades are supposed to represent grass on a golf course along with the freezing man with the scarf and the golfing man. The third add, in red, says " Salt. Great for margaritas, not for roads," suggesting to the viewer to get out of the cold and drink margaritas on the beach.  The color red is representing fruity drinks, also being implied by the martini glasses imbedded into the pattern.

All 3 ads are thoroughly saturated on one end with the strong teardrop, lemon and circle pattern.  They all taper off to white where the type is.  I think that is a strong directional element in either type to design or design to type relationships.  The small font is successful because it is very simple and quiet.  It has a design to start it off that mimics the shapes in the bold design.  The type is aligned to the top half of the small design and when it takes up two lines, it follows the bottom half of the design.   I think that these designs fit together very nicely because the design is repetitive and similar to each other.   I also think that the monochromatic coloring in each one of the ads are great because it draws the eye to the solid figures in the middle of the designs.

Form and Content 5 (picture)

Photo for F&C 3

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

I found this image on www.ilovetypography.com.  I absolutely love the work!

The artist is unknown, but it was made as in informational piece for Extra Virgin

Olive oil.  Although this type piece is completely in German, it states the everyday 

uses, brands, and benefits of extra virgin olive oil.  What I love about this piece is 

its lush, organic feel to represent the organic product.  The way the text boxes wrap 

around the images is a very fresh way to represent the text. I think that the directional 

quality of each brings a lot of interest to the text piece. I really enjoy that the titles 

for each brand are in a different font, almost giving it a collaged feel.  The main 

photograph has a lot of luminosity and ties the white font color of the text bodies 

into the images. The additive color of green into the text breaks up the color of the 

white and gives the piece a more 'natural' color scheme.  Overall, I love this piece of 

text work.  The directional quality, difference in text, color scheme, and images 

makes this a complete package. 

Form and Content 3

This is an illustration for an article about the money management of humanitarian foundations in the world for the New York Times.  The designer's name is Lorenzo Petrantoni. He wanted to bring back the style of old book illustrations, and to tell the story from beginning to end with one graphic.

I think that he explored a great deal of texture and pattern in this image. The composition is very strong as it leads your eye around the image.  The varying thickness of the text in vertical and horizontal lines is interesting to read.  The strong bolds draw you in first and then lead you to read the smaller text around it. The text also forms wrap around style around the graphics in the image.  I believe there is also a use of some kind of Dingbats around the edges of the words to make it look more like art than text. The black and white colors are very bold. However, there's a ragged edge to the letterforms that make them look worn and more like a newsprint graphic than a book graphic.  I also think that the rag edges of the image make it overall more appealing than if it had aligned edges.  I think that this is a very cool piece, almost like a page from an iSpy book.  

Form and Content 2

For my second form and content, I chose this piece from the Communication Arts website to write about.  The piece is called 'Heart & Design auction catalog.'  This catalog was put together by Frost* Design in London to support the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospital.  The items in the catalog were donated by their designers.  Some included: Marc Jacobs, John Galliano and Karl Lagerfeld.  These items were auctioned off for the cause of heart and lung disease research.

I really like the layout of these pages.  The color scheme of white, black, and red that they chose is very strong on the item pages.  They also chose to put hearts as a design element and that makes sense.  I thin the way that they chose to type each designer is very bold.  I love how they wrote it vertically and made the font color red.  That puts more emphasis on who donated the item instead of what the item actually is. My favorite layout pages are the Marc Jacobs handbag and the Studio Job necklace because the straps and the necklace lead your eye around and off the page.  

Form and Content 1

This article was posted to the Communication Arts website.  The photos were taken from jetBlue Terminal 5 at the JFK airport in New York.  Designer TJ McCormick created the T5 logo with inspiration from the airplane tail-shaped terminal building. He also used bold colors and simplistic designs to refresh their outdated look.

You can see more about this terminal on their website at www.t508.com

I think the color scheme they used is fantastic.  The complementary colors he used in the first picture are very bold design elements.   I think he also kept the type simple so that it was easily readable when you are quickly walking by.   The second photo has great use of iconography and color to describe the gender of the bathroom.  The OVERSIZE font on the wall of the oversized baggage terminal is appropriate and bold to show exactly where the flyer goes to get their bag over the heads of the other hundreds of people in the room.

Overall, I think that the color and design of the terminal is very successful.