Typography

Typography is an aspect of visual communication design that can positively influence the message of document when done correctly. During undergrad, I learned about typography and how to create logos and nice headings for documents and projects. Typography is the balance of text and image on a page. The personality of a typeface can affect the mood of a document, thus it is important to choose fitting fonts for your documents and media presentations. If you are preparing a professional document it would be in your best interest to steer away from using decorative fonts with curves, balloons,fireworks etc.

To support my analysis of typography, I found a group of videos on YouTube created my students and designers alike that all convey different messages. Some of the videos are pretty interesting and exhibit a great amount of detail and use of typographical techniques. I particularly enjoyed this video entitled Typography:sky , where the user took an excerpt and set it to music. There was a modern typeface used, but it was an appropriate font for the content of the poem and the music that accompanied it. To place emphasis on certain words, the type changed in point sizes and often the opacity of color of the type changed as well, creating a grayscale effect. The most appealing portion of the video was the effect of the word "screamed" which resembled the image of an echo, if one could see sound traveling. When the music changed in form, the type followed suit, showing continuity in the design of the video.

Organic Letters is a very creative video where the designer made an animation of a tree that was growing; with lines of text appearing and fading as its branches.

One of the most interesting videos I watched was one set a scene from the movie Pulp Fiction. There were two typefaces used for each of the characters which were very different from one another. The character with the authoritative voice was given a large font and all of the narration appeared large on the screen and bold, while the other character's font was significantly smaller coinciding with the character's voice and role in the scene. The type was timed perfectly with the narration creating an interactive document that was very entertaining. The creator used the space well with words appearing horizontally, vertically and diagonally to keep the reader active in viewing the video. There are a number of typography videos set to scenes from a movie on YouTube.

At first, typography was a specialized occupation and would only be done by typesetters, but with all of the technology, people can easily create new fonts and use programs such Photoshop and Illustrator to manipulate type any way they can imagine.