The Language of Typefaces

"Go ahead, fall down. The world looks different from the ground." - Oprah Winfrey 

Picking a quote for this assignment involved some searching. I love a good quote, but I don’t have that one (or even two or three) quotes that I default to. After poking around, I finally settled on a quote by Oprah. I listen to her podcast, Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations, and I’m inspired by the guests she brings on and the ways their stories have allowed me to check my understanding and perceptions. Here’s the link, if anyone is interested. 

My process first involved finding the typefaces that I wanted to use. Because typography has a strong personality, I wanted it to be the guiding concept for my posters. Google fonts was a great resource, especially the function that Sumi pointed out in class for showing your specific text in the different typefaces. Google fonts was almost too good though; there were SO many choices! I felt like my scrollbar stayed constant, even as new typefaces continued to load. Eventually, I was able to narrow down my typeface choices to three distinct personalities.

Gradients and white space, 24x28

The first poster I tackled was the largest one. Because the quote references falling down, I wanted to break up the quote into two parts, using white space and proximity (distance, in this case) to convey the feeling of falling down as one reads it. This was the anchoring concept for this poster. I opted to use a clean, simple text to allow the overall design of the poster to communicate the message. I also opted for a balanced composition because I liked the way it made the poster look clean and uncomplicated. In choosing the background color, I used a blue hue for the top of the poster, which gradually turned into green at the bottom to represent the literal colors of the sky and ground. I played around with making the gradient change from blue to orange, a contrasting color, to communicate the “different view,” but it made the poster a little less easy on the eyes. I was going back and forth with the color combinations for a while, but I finally decided to stick with my original idea because it was a more calming color combination, which I feel lent itself well to the quote overall: a sense of calm even in adversity.

A handwritten note, 11x17

The second poster I tackled was the one with a yellow background. The typeface I chose drove the concept for this poster, as I felt it evoked the feeling of a handwritten note, like the quote is a piece of advice from a mother or a friend. At first, I was going to create a small, square poster to emulate a sticky note, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with how it looked. It ended up looking like the sticky notes that you can create on a desktop, so I thought it kind of missed the mark for what I was trying to go for. Instead, I chose to create an 11x17 poster and used the rule of thirds to align the text on the top line. I used Adobe Colors to find analogous warm colors, since the poster is supposed to evoke the feeling of a note lovingly written by a friend or family member. I also broke the lines of text up into three varying yet balanced lengths, widening the kerning to take up more space on the page. 

"Ground" falling down, 8.5x11

For my final poster, I chose a typeface that looked old-timey. At first this was the central concept for this poster, as if the quote is old wisdom being passed down. This is why I went with the gray gradient as the background color and black as the text color. I was going to display the text on one continuous line to evoke the feeling of a newspaper, but it just looked boring. I started to play around with the placement of the words and found that I could create a nice cascading effect with the text. I decided to stick with this idea to create more visual interest. I also widened the kerning so the text took up more space on the page. I aligned the text in the bottom left-hand corner because it felt like a natural fit there. I also change the color of the word “ground” to an off-white to create contrast and more visual interest. I also like how it looks like the word “ground” is a separate entity from the rest of the text, almost as if the word had fallen down the slope of text. 

The final presentation

For my presentation, I knew I wanted to take advantage of the different colored walls in our space. I chose the corner that I did in order to display the big poster on a colored background and the grey poster on a white background, in keeping with the theme and look of each of those posters. Lastly, I displayed the yellow poster taped to a chair, to make it look like it was a note that was left for someone.