A picture...oh, uh, strike that, a LETTER is worth a thousand words!

Whoever first said that writing is a form of expression should have added a little note to give credit to typography too.  Sure, when reading a sentence, paragraph, advertisement, or story, you can use your voice to inflect emotion and character, but when you are only given a visual, designers rely on typography to get the point across.  The size, shape, and font of the text matter.  The color, the flourishes, and the placement of the text have a difinitive impact on the way that text is interpreted.  In advertisements and logos, text is crucial to the product and the company.  In class, we looked at the Hummer® logo, and tested out different fonts o

n the word, but none seemed to fit besides the bold, Sans Serif text that we all recognized as the real thing.  The letters are bold, bulky, and in all capitals, creating an overpowering sense, such as many feel on the road with one of the big, tank inspired cars.

If we looked at a poster for any one of the 

infamous "Saw"

films, even without any visuals besides the text, we would instantly recognize it as a horror film because of the spooky text.  Text is one way that we use to draw associations with brands, movies, places, or emotions.  Other examples include Verizon, which features an added descender to the "z", and Walt Disney,which, without the distinctive lettering, would not be as recognizable.  Both brands are instantly recognizable by the text, which proves that a picture, or in this case, a font, is worth a thousand words.   Lupton stresses that everything–stems, bowls, ascenders, descenders, and everything else that makes letters in different

fonts look like they do–are important.  Whether the reason be because the letters were created for digital display, like Matthew Carter's Verdana type, or Times Roman, originally created for use in a London newspaper, each font and the individual letters involved are important to the way the message is both read and conveyed.  

Lupton and the importance of typeface

After reading Lupton and after talking about typeface in class, it's hard to believe that I never really took notice of different fonts, word arrangements, etc. All my life I've been exposed to typeface in numerous ways (ads, different websites, books, etc.) But only now have my eyes been open to the importance of typeface.
The font, the spacing, the arrangement-it's all important to how the message is conveyed. Never before have a realized this so clearly. In the past I have been ignorant to the fact that typeface is so important. I never looked at an advertisement or a company's logo and thought, "That's nice, but the typeface looks off." Now, I'll look at a logo or poster and think if the typeface conveys the right message.
What really opened my eyes to this was the example of Hummer. If the Hummer logo was any different, a thinner font or more spaced out, it wouldn't fit the product Hummer sells (which are over sized, gas-guzzling SUVs).
As we have said, typeface is used in different ways to convey the type of a certain product. this is ertainly evident in movie titles. The way in which a title of a movie is written often hels to predict what type of movie it will be. Look at the poster below for "30 Days of Night." This movie was classified as a horror movie. On the poster, you can see that the title is written in blood read and in a font that looks as though it were speared on, which gives it an eerie tone.


In contrast to this, look at the poster above for "Dude, Where's My Car?". In this poster, the lettering is big and bubbly, which gives it a fun effect. This is much more fitting for a comedy, which "Dude, Where's My Car?" is.

Lupton's Letters: more than spelling words, Ryan Gerhardt

I've been using fonts for years on various processors and Word type programs not really comprehending the difference in fonts. Certainly some had appeal because they were different, cool, or had interesting names yet I used the same one or two fonts over ninety percent of the time. Why is this? Practicality. Teachers, the main receptacle for things I had typed, required no frills fonts so why would I need to use Garamond or Palatino? To me those names were gibberish and remained that way until I started reading Lupton's book.

Fortunately for me, Lupton's book provided solutions to both of my problems in the very first chapter. What I had long thought were names made up for different fonts by computer programmers with too much time on their hands I soon learned had a long historical significance. Bodoni, Didot, and Baskerville were names that I had scrolled by frequently on Microsoft Word and now had a connection to the real world. Being someone interested in history, I was intrigued to discover that these fonts were anchored in the works and writings of printers and calligraphers that lived hundreds of years ago. I had always figured that script and calligraphy was the basis of many fonts but the fact that the slight stylistic differences found among the fonts created typography that is still used today was something I had not known. Type stamped on the pages of a book, talk about a lasting impression. 

The other main clarification Lupton's book opened my eyes to was the fact that practicality is not reserved for the few fonts I had used in high school. Most, if not all fonts, can be used practically depending on the nature of the situation. Typography conveys as much of a message as the actual text itself which for me was a new concept. As I said, I would pick fonts because they looked cool and never much thought about the subtle message that was conveyed in the way a type presented the text. I realize now that the attributes associated with certain styles create messages to go along with the text message. A perfect example of this is the Hummer wordmark. Regardless of what type used, Hummer is still spelled the same and still represents a car company. However, the use of bold and heavy type creates the rugged attribute that Hummer wants associated with their vehicles. Had a type with thin structures been used, the same message of ruggedness would not have been conveyed.  

One of my favorite uses of typography are tattoos. Stylistically, tattoos seem to present unique twists on set typography which in turn create a personalized message. Having recently watched the film "The Boondock Saints," one typography in particular came to mind:

Image source: http://images.chron.com/blogs/blog9/veritas.jpg

A simple word, veritas. In Latin, the word veritas means truth which in reference to the movie represented the main characters' quest for truth and goodness in the world. Looking closely at the type, more of the story can be told. By using a bold, heavy, and all capital text the brothers' resolve and fortitude to clean up the world is conveyed. What I particularly like about this tattoo is the very archaic nature of the font. To me, the word is not only Latin and ancient but so is the type. The brothers in the movie use force and a very brutal and archaic method to eradicate evil, furthering the connection. 

Typography is a far more calculated process than I had first believed it to be. No longer will I see it as arbitrary, especially when it comes time to choose a type for my tattoo.