Political Logos

Barack Obama

George W. Bush

Sarah Palin

France

A logo for France.  FRANCE!!

Melting

Physical typography done for my Digital Design midterm

With this project, we had to select a word from the poem Landscape with the Fall of Icarus by William Carlos Williams that we felt best described the overall content.  We were compose the word in a way that we felt interprets the poem.  I chose "melting" because I've always been fascinated by the story of Icarus.  The idea of someone enjoying the bliss of flight and having profound joy with his newfound freedom, only to have it all ripped from him because he aimed too high is something anyone can empathize with.  He aimed high, got a taste of pure joy, then had it taken from him. 

I chose the word "melting" because I felt it captured the feeling of Icarus's tragedy and also provides a distinct visual relative to the story.  Constructing it, I used hot glue on a poster board, and melted a red crayon over it.  I chose a cursive font because I thought it would fit the word better.  For the color, I chose dark red because I wanted it to be reminiscent of seal wax.  The melting sealed his fate and forever shut the door on him so he would never be able to attain his dreams.  I tried to capture his descent, both physical and emotional.

Evolve

A typography exercise for my digital design class

Wedding Drawings

My sister asked me to do 14 drawings for her wedding to serve as the table cards so people know where to sit. She basically wanted parodies of things she/they enjoyed with them as the characters.

Good Typography

Awesome indeed!  This advertisement really caught my eye, mainly because it's freaking gigantic!  I also really liked the design and layout of it all.  The short and sweet lure of the good review is enormous and simplistic.  Heck, I had no idea it was just a message letting us know they're renovating and I was instantly captivated.  The shiny gold letters may have played a role in that.  I also quite like how the text goes from super large to small to smaller.  It hooks you with the large, awesome quote, draws your eye to the source, then you can't help but want to read the rest of it.  Overall, I think it's really good if it captured me so well.  I'm just lucky it wasn't an ad calling for the support of releasing known murderers and rapists unto the world or I'd feel really bad!

Oh Shakespeare!  How much of my money have I wasted here on textbooks alone?  A lot.  Could it be due to the attractive typography of the store front??  Probably not, but it is pretty nifty!  It's really simple, yet aesthetically pleasing and fitting to the store.  By sticking with a serif font, they give the feeling of the old times, which I believe is associated with plenty of book stores (to me, at least).  The store name is large and takes up all the vertical space available, while the rest of the text is smaller and stacked next to it.  I don't know why, but there's something really amazing about that.

I think I like this one because I think I have a penchant for stacked text with varying sizes.  This one in particular has a very modern feel, most likely due to the transparent glass background and the skinny letters (I think that with this design, they would've been perceived as modern regardless of whether or not the font was serif of sans serif).  I honeslty have no idea who Jean-Claude Biguine is, but it's pretty clear the place is a hair salon because the store has a glass front, allowing people to peer in at any time.  The title layout is simply attractive and probably reflects the fact that they give sleek, modern haircuts.  Overall a success in typography, I'd say, as it matches the salon's overall theme.

I've always liked the UNIQLO logo; it's simple, attractive, and instantly recognizable.  Though, I've always liked the Japanese version better mainly because the squareness of the characters really fits well with the squareness of the logo.  The romanized version is simply the phonetic spellings of the Japanese characters stuffed into the square.  While not bad, the Japanese one is simply better.  It's very simple and is comprised only of straight lines, which I think looks great.  It give sit a sleek, modern look, which reflects the store and its contents.  A success, I say.

Last, but not least, is a standard Subway sign.  It's pointing peoples' way to the exit and to the other trains in the station by using the standard Helvetica font.  I think that it's so simple and straightforward that it's good.  The Exit, probably the most important thing to show, is encased in a red box, with the "Exit" text bold and taking up all the vertical space it can.  The rest of the information is listed very simply on the side, perfectly spaced vertically for ease of recognition and understandability.  The trains are listed in a perfect 2x2 grid, and next to the arrow pointing the way.  Overall very simple and straightforward, which I like!

Bad Typography

Spotted on the 6 train headed uptown in the morning, I found myself staring blankly at this ad for several minutes.  "Why are those R's backwards," I thought to myself.  I also wondered why they were white, standing apart from the rest of the title.  It seemed like strange aesthetic choices that didn't serve to improve the advertisement at all.  The font served its purpose of providing a horror-esque feel, along with the choice of red font.  However, it felt to me like the addition of the white, backwards R's only left me confused, detracting from the overall advertisement.  To improve it, I would simply flip them so they aren't backwards, and color them red, like the rest of the title.

Don't mock my Photoshop skills!!  What?  You weren't?  Oh.  Well, anyway, this is my improvement on the advertisement.  Basically, I just flipped the R's and made 'em all red-like to match the rest of the title.  It looks a lot better to me (probably because of my amazing photomanipulation techniques)!

 Now this flyer, spotted on the third floor of Hunter West, made me laugh.  It's just formatted so strangely that the thing it's trying to advertise is lost completely (to me, at least).  The "STOP BY FOR FREE" does an adequate job of grabbing your attention with big, bold letters, but then for some reason, the font size drops by more than half when listing the things that are supposed to be free - the things that are supposed to lure people in.  The font then re-increases in size for the "INFORMATION" part, which I believe is one of the more unappealing things you can choose to spotlight in order to get people to come to an event.  The font size then becomes large and bold again for "SCIENCE OR MATH TEACHER," which ends up becoming the second thing I see after the "STOP BY FOR FREE" part due to the size and boldness of the font.  My eyes were basically zig-zagging all over the flyer because of the font size inconsistencies.  They seem to be emphasizing the wrong bits of information here, and are just confusing people who may come across this flyer.

For this one, I chose to stick to dear ol' Helvetica simply because I believe the content would speak for itself, and the flyer's main purpose should be to inform people of free pizza.  Oh, and the job information and scholarships and whatnot.  I tried to highlight the important information by making them bigger and bolder, while keeping the info small (because if they're looking for the info, they're already hooked; no need to make it super large).  Also, I felt like the wording was kinda nonsensical - they tell you you're coming for "INFORMATION" as if it's a bigger draw than free pizza.  What fools!  And they made the supposed lure of the whole thing in the smallest font of the page.  Ridiculous!  My version hopefully rectified that.

 This flyer, also found on the 3rd floor of Hunter West is an example of bad photography.  Wait, I mean bad typography (...yeah, and photography; I'm terrible).  I don't really understand the font choice, as it doesn't seem to match the content.  "Speak out..." is in a cracked, bold font, which kind of makes me think of some sort of violent earthquake.  I think it should be inciting inspiration, encouraging people to fight for their rights, but the font doesn't seem to be cutting it.  Then, there's the alternating fonts in the bottom highlighting issues they are speaking up about.  It seems like an odd choice, as it just makes the flyer look way too busy.  In fact, I just noticed that there are about 10 different fonts being used on this one flyer alone.  It really makes it look unappealing and somewhat difficult to read because you don't know if one thing of higher importance than the other.  It's an overall mess.

In my rendition, I changed the entire flyer so that it only has one font: Impact.  I feel that it sends the right message in that it's calling for concern, outrage, and action.  I removed all the unnecessary text on the sides, as this only served to confuse and distract from the main issue.  I made the important points larger than the rest in order to emphasize their importance.  Keeping the overall design simple, it can properly convey its message without it getting lost in the sea of fonts and poor design.

Now this one just confused me.  ...much like the others, I guess.  Anyway, I found this when walking down 3rd Avenue.  It was on the side of the sign of toy store (whose name escapes me at the moment, if I ever knew it at all).  The font does not excite me.  And I think a sign for a toy store should excite me (because I am an overgrown child).  It seems more like a Halloween store, to be honest, with the orange background and complimentary blue font.  Also, I have no idea what "Very Good Toys East" is supposed to mean, because that is not the name of the store.  ...Perhaps they're trying to say that they're very good.  The font is overall dull and would not appeal to children, in my opinion.  And I just realize... that's Comic Sans.  I remember reading somewhere that you should never use Comic Sans.  Ever.

To improve it, i chose a more fun, kid-friendly font.  I also changed up the formatting so it doesn't just look like they typed it out on a template and divided it into two lines simply because they didn't have enough space.  I also broke the words up, adding extra emphasis on the "TOYS," to lure sweet, innocent children into the store.  Little do they know that this is in fact a butcher shop, ha ha ha ha ha (kidding).  I also drew attention away from the "East" because it was just confusing to have them all with equal importance and just caused me to pronounce it all as a sentence (kinda like, "The very good toys are east").

Intersection Floral Design right across the street from Hunter.  The font does not suit the content whatsoever.  Although they may cater to our floral needs, the font suggests that they might also sell hardware, or something.  The choice of a bold, serif font seems like a poor decision because in no way does the font reflect the beautiful flowers you may get here for a loved one.  The font seems more reminiscent of Home Depot than anything (though, I suppose you can buy plants at Home Depot, but that just isn't the same).  The font should be more delicate, probably a sans serif font or something in cursive.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my improvement on their title design.  All I did was change the font!  It looks much more elegant and friendly, and less like they're going to shove the flowers where the sun don't shine (which would probably kill the flowers, because from what I hear, flowers need sunlight to survive).  The font has more of a "floral" feel to it, and it seems much less imposing than the original bold, serif font.