My AP History teacher in High School gave extra credit to students who passed in papers with multiple fonts and colors. I guess that was his way of making the class fun, though most of us used it as an opportunity to meet paper length requirements. Even then, I didn’t think much about typography. There was Times New Roman for school papers, Comic Sans when you wanted to be cute, and maybe Arial for everything else. I can’t quite recall whether my school newspaper used Courier New or not. But now I notice typography. As an indie filmmaker on a budget, I often find myself donning lots of hats, including that of designer. We’ve designed the DVD packaging and promotional design of all of our films. And while we have hired designers for our logo and for help with our websites, they’ve been projects with which we’ve been strongly involved. In every case, great typefaces have helped to communicate a message; played a critical role in telling a story.
Take our logo for example. We were really drawn to the word Eidolon itself. It has lots of circular looking letters in it so we wanted to highlight that fact. Our designer used the typeface Bauhaus and rotated the ‘e’. She added a series of warm-colored concentric circles next to word to create a feeling of connectedness, which is part of our mission at Eidolon. For “films’ we wanted something that would be clean, readable and professional, yet would provide some contrast to the word above it. Our designer selected Blair ITC Light. Together, the fonts read artistic, professional, modern, friendly, accessible — all values we want to communicate about our business.
The Stories Behind Typefaces
Typography can be a medium through which to communicate and so it’s no surprise that there are varied and interesting stories behind each typeface design. For example, Tupelo, created by designer
Philip Bouwsma, uses the handwriting of two influential men in US history: Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln. MyFonts.com calls this “the closest a typeface has ever come, in its timeliness and historic relevance, to making a statement about these modern days’ fusion of politics and popular culture.”
May’s MyFonts newsletter features an interview with Natalia Vasilyeva, a designer with Russia’s tyefoundry Paratype. I love the way she describes her artistic form: “In general, the art of type attracts me because aesthetics are so important to its proper form; the image does not refer to some graceful object or landscape, like painting does, but exercises an aesthetic effect of its own. A beautiful typeface is similar to a beautiful melody. It can be compared to music as much as architecture.”
TRIVIA: What is the most ubiquitous typeface?
You may have seen it on New York City’s MTA signs or on big brands like American Airlines, Toyota and Apple. It’s none other than Helvetica, the sans-serif font designed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffman. In 2007, the 50th anniversary of the font, filmmaker Gary Hustwit released a documentary aptly named Helvetica. Not only is it a great documentary on design and typography, but it inspires one to be aware of the intentional creations that surround us, even on the often overlooked Subway sign.
