To communicate a message using text, the choice of typography is key to getting that message across. Choose the wrong typography and your message is lost, choose the right typography and the message cannot be ignored.
This week’s lecture was based around the topic of Typography, something that is key in Interaction Design as well as Communication Design, as we have also looked at it during that module as well.
We started however by having a brief look at the Children’s Code of Conduct a set of guidelines to be followed when designing content for children. Local design consultancy Big Motive were involved with in its creation and it covers a wide range of topics including keeping children safe online to designing content in a way that is the best fit for children. Whilst we didn’t look at in any detail its great to know this resource exists and can be looked at if the need to design children’s content comes up for me at any point in my design career.
Typography is a huge field with millions of typefaces available and so many different factors to consider, and we as students need to start from the beginning and get the basics down, its clear working with Typography is a career long learning endeavour, with different styles and trends changing all the time and new tools being made available to designers, not to mention the ever changing way we as people are consuming content from smartphones to VR, typography is ever-changing.
I think this quote sums it up very well and succinctly:
There are no born masters of typography.
— Jan Tschichold
Source (https://practice.typekit.com/) Last Accessed 13/10/2022
Jan Tschichold was a major 20th century designer with a particular interest in typography the quote above comes from his essay “Clay in a Potter’s hand”, he also designed typefaces and at first was very interested in working with asymmetric typography such as that below:
Source (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/5754) Last Accessed 13/10/2022
However he then moved on and created the very symmetrical and grid based covers for the penguin book series in the 1940s a clearly a man who could design for the job at hand and very talented in multiple ways of doing things.
Source (https://blog.shillingtoneducation.com/jan-tschichold-tbt/) Last Accessed 13/10/2022