TUESDAY DECEMBER 30, 2008

The value of you…in type

The value of you, in your design…

There’s nothing I love more than a personal touch in a design project, when there’s a balance between the use of the computer and the creativity behind the person designing the piece. There are a lot of ways to do this. Whether it involves photos you’ve taken or art you’ve produced, there’s a sense of pride and investment when it comes from you. I see a lot of my peers doing this at Duarte.

Recently, I discovered a site that really helps with this. www.yourfonts.com allows you to make a font in a matter of minutes.

Here’s an example of the difference it can make. With a personal font, the infamous quote slide, (we see them again and again,) has the ability to allow your audience to feel how meaningful that quote can be. What an amazing idea, to have a unique font to represent each person you’re quoting, or that a whole slideshow could be built in your visual voice! With respect for legibility, you can create some really dynamic visuals that get away from some of the safe old stereotypes.

Here is a quote from one of those creative Duartians, paired with one of his personal photographs. I don’t need to tell you much about him; when you see the visual paired with the font it gives you a little sense of the person.

can_the_world_see_type

The slide below is a bit different. This time, I made a handwritten font by scribbling quickly and roughly on the yourfonts.com template. Within a few minutes the font was downloaded to my machine, and ready to use. Check out the difference…

can_the_world_see1

The handwriting provides a sense now of how the person speaks, their character, and more. With a few more tweaks in color, we could have an amazing quote slide.

This isn’t a new concept. In fact, I think Stefan Sagmeister has led the march against consuming everyday fonts and really thinking about type as an organic living thing within design. Look at his older and newer work on his site. There’s even a giant ad made for Adobe where they produced the type taking a photo of hundreds of coffee cups…brilliant.

So never negate the value of that doodle you did on the napkin, or think that clip art is better then anything you can draw. That’s simply not true. Injecting a little personality can go a long way.

Some of my favorite presentations are the ones where the presenter has included something personal, a window into their world beyond the stage. After spending more then a decade becoming an expert in computer graphics, I now appreciate the value of a crayon, and you can quote me on that.

Topic: Design, Technology
Tags: font, Typography

COMMENTS (6)

Deeter

^{December 31st, 2008

6:05 am}

Thanks for the link to the font generator. I agree that in design work, which include presentations, the font chosen makes all the difference

Another great font site is abstractfonts.com.

steve olenski

^{December 31st, 2008

12:33 pm}

Thanks! I love this!

Beckie

^{December 31st, 2008

6:45 pm}

I’m not a graphic designer or artist, but I’ve always been fascinated by fonts. I really don’t know why; I only recently have come to learn about typography. I think this is a great blog topic and thank you for your insight on this matter!

mauco

^{January 2nd, 2009

10:43 am}

I’ve never really liked my handwriting much, but with this font generator I’m really excited!

I’ve always liked the idea of adding a ‘personal touch’ to my designs but I’ve never really had the courage to do so. Rather I tend to play it safe to going with the general concepts. Maybe this is the year I’ll explore the value of me…

Virtual Web Symphony

^{January 3rd, 2009

6:55 am}

I don’t believe in the version which is presented here. I believe it is advisable to have one’s own style but getting a personalized font is not the right idea. Rather it should be your style of writing and the content.

Mark Heaps

^{January 5th, 2009

12:21 pm}

I’m glad everyone had such strong responses to the post. I’m a big fan of organic type; having been strongly influenced by various styles of lettering ranging from traditional calligraphy to graffiti.

There is something wonderful about a piece of type that is unique, like a signature. Some companies even use it as their brand. Read the history of the Coca Cola logo sometime, it’s an amazing piece of history.

If you don’t feel like creating your own font there are a wide variety of other sites out there to download from. One of my favorites is http://www.misprintedtype.com

He has a good amount of freeware fonts as well as commercial ones. Please feel free to share your examples of work that you like also. I love seeing this stuff!

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