Letters, words, logos, and texts. Typography has crept into our lives whether we like it or not.
But what exactly is typography?
Typography is considered an art form which uses typefaces, point size, leading, line spacing, kerning and tracking. It’s everywhere from books to billboards and everything in between. In a society where language is a cultural identity, texts are extremely important. I don’t see why I would have to explain, but you might not have noticed. Our world is run by typos.
In creating texts, such as those seen in regular books or those employed in business and product logo, all require fonts. Fonts not only refer to the style but also to the size and the spacing in between the letters.
Fonts have gone a long way from its early printing days to the many quirky fonts we see today. Although changes have taken place, fonts generally still carry the same philosophy and that is efficiency.
Books are conveniently printed with serif fonts for easier reading. Serif fonts usually display a cleaner, crisper look, it is also not very distracting to the eye making it more efficient compared to those of stylized fonts.
Many companies rely on their marketing and branding strategists to rake in profits, and a big part in branding is the Logo design of a company. As consumers, we don’t normally think about it, we merely think of a brand logo as just a logo, but a lot of thought actually goes into designing one. Think of it as a perpetual representation of your brand, it needs to be scrutinized and probably rehashed at some point, if necessary.
Successful brands like The Coca Cola Company, more than the alliteration, have successfully created a logo that is etched in the minds of many, before they were successful though, they had to create an image that would be engraved in the consciousness of everyone during that time. And that kind of situation makes typography an interesting study – for a little while, at least.
Let us take the case of Coca-Cola, imbibed with the spirit and youthfulness of America during that time, it must have been a challenge to conceptualize a logo that would change very little over the years. It had to appeal a little bit to the younger generation, that’s why I think that the designers incorporated the swirly font onto the design aesthetics of the logo. The spacing and size matter as well, too far apart and the word mark would not seem balanced, too close together and you lose the seriousness to the brand. When letters in a word are closer to each other, they risk now being read as well. Therefore, the brain will have to make more effort to process the information at hand, this would’ve been okay, except your competition has a logo that it better read.
Websites are also dominated by texts, with a larger canvas to play with, fonts can be any type in this kind of setting. Of course, you would have to have a concrete design idea to play around with the fonts and the styles, but the more detail you put in, the more accessible your identity is. We can take the Facebook logo as an example of this. Throughout the years, we have seen how Facebook leveraged on exclusivity and, at the same time, the social experience of putting your relationship status on your page. The facebook logo has so simply put it in a very apt way. Fun and Cool.
This article was made possible with the help of Peter de Jesus. Peter is a marketing consultant for You The Designer. The Leading source of design news, tips, tutorials and inspirational graphic designs. Check out You The Designer on Google+