Choosing the Appropriate Typeface for your Projects

Good Typography is beautiful and that's a fact. But how can you define good typography? There are millions of different typefaces on the internet and most of them are offered for free which makes it very difficult for designers to choose the appropriate fonts for logos, websites, posters etc. Today we showcase a fresh collection of the latest typefaces available to help you out a bit choosing some creative fonts for your projects.


Also if you are interested here are some tutorials that will help you out choosing the right typeface.

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Designing Style Guidelines For Brands And Websites

A website is never done. Everyone has worked on a project that changed so much after it launched that they no longer wanted it in their portfolio. One way to help those who take over your projects is to produce a style guide.

Edward Tufte once said: “Great design is not democratic; it comes from great designers. If the standard is lousy, then develop another standard.” Although there’s no stopping some clients from making their website awful, by creating a style guide, you’re effectively establishing rules for those who take over from you.

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Lessons From Swiss Style Graphic Design

Also known as International Style, the Swiss Style does not simply describe a style of graphic design made in Switzerland. It became famous through the art of very talented Swiss graphic designers, but it emerged in Russia, Germany and Netherlands in the 1920’s. This style in art, architecture and culture became an ‘international’ style after 1950’s and it was produced by artists all around the globe. Despite that, people still refer to it as the Swiss Style or the Swiss Legacy.

This progressive, radical movement in graphic design is not concerned with the graphic design in Switzerland, but rather with the new style that had been proposed, attacked and defended in the 1920s in Switzerland. Keen attention to detail, precision, craft skills, system of education and technical training, a high standard of printing as well as a clear refined and inventive lettering and typoraphy laid out a foundation for a new movement that has been exported worldwide in 1960s to become an international style.

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Can a Font Help a City Make a Comeback?

Around the world, only a few hundred people make a living as fulltime typeface designers. Two of them happen to live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, population 167,000, where they've embarked on an ambitious project to distill the city's artistic and entrepreneurial spirit into a font called Chatype. The goal is to help the city and its businesses forge a distinct and cohesive identity through custom typeface, sending a visual message to the world that Chattanooga—a rapidly growing city in the midst of a creative renaissance—is “more than just your average Southern town.”

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40 Remarkable Examples Of Typography Design #5

It’s been a really long time since we did our series of typography inspiration. Believe in or not,  it was all the way back in January 2011. Today we are happy to bring it back, to feature some outstanding typography designs. We selected all of the following work based on quality, thus giving you the best of the best. All of the image are credited their original creators. We do not take credit for any of there work, however we do take credit for scavenger hunting the internet in order to find them.

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For Typography Enthusiasts, A Limited Edition Of Scrabble

If you’re crazy about typography, the new Scrabble edition will not fail to entice you.

The popular boardgame company has just released the limited edition Scrabble Typography.

The new version features a beautiful storage case with a drawer, a matching six-panel magnetized gameboard as well as tiles that carry different and exciting fonts—all of which are made of solid walnut.

Manufactured by Winning Solutions, which is behind other classic Hasbro brands like Monopoly and Clue, the set will also include a signed and numbered certificate of authenticity.

Sophisticated and sleek, the Scrabble Typography will be available come August but you can pre-order one now at a price of US$199.


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Fantastic Examples of Package Design

What a better way to end the work week than with a healthy dose of inspiration. And as we’ve mentioned before there’s nothing wrong with looking at other mediums to get inspired. So today we’re showing you some fantastic examples of package design, where beauty and functionality are both equally important. In this collection you will find beautiful typography, color schemes, textures and layouts that might give you some ideas for your own designs. Remember to click on the images to find out more about each package and their designers.

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25 Crazy Typography Artworks – Logos, Posters, Packaging & Ads!

Typography is an integral part of visual arts and is executed by creative professionals like graphic designers, art directors, comic book artists and graffiti artists. There is a general misconception that typography is, similar and easy as writing. But in reality, the arrangement of typeset entails various details like point size, line length, line spacing, tracking and kerning.

In the contemporary graphic design world, typography is seen everywhere from logos to poster designs and graffiti. It enables a designer to put their thoughts into motion and add emotions to their message. Even the world of advertising has employed typographic prints ads to convey the marketing message. Today’s post presents a rundown on some of the best works of typography across genres like logo design, poster design, packaging and print ads.

Each of these 25 typography inspired graphic artworks exhibit a unique and clever way of presenting the idea and concepts:


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Big Economic Ideas Explained, In Minimalist Posters

Wikipedia defines short-selling as “the practice of selling assets that have not been purchased beforehand, but which the seller may have borrowed from a third party with the intention of buying identical assets back at a later date to return to that third party.”

Huh?

Here’s another definition:

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the role of Typography

Graphic Design is a very challenging creative and artistic job. Graphic designer has to be able to solve the task given and comes up with the idea of visual communication which not only attractive but yet persuading the viewers/readers to grab the message behind it and arouse the emotion, logic and certain needs. Generally, graphic designer use a lot of pictures, symbols, letters and any other graphic elements.

Sometimes, Graphic Designer is assigned to do the lay out or composition of many words or long sentences on many pages. In this case, letters or typography is no longer as an additional element but they are the main element of the graphic communication known as books, brochures or catalogue.

Either as an additional or main element, typography has a very important role to determine the result of visual communication. Many designers think that the most important in design is the thought or the idea and how it would be executed. They consider typography as an additional element.

The truth is that typography could be the main idea of the graphic communication and could be the only effective visual communication. In some cases, we found that the mistakes of the typography usage could ruins the whole design no matter how good the design is. The result is that the viewers/readers couldn’t get the message that we try to deliver. Some designers, especially the beginners don’t have the sense of harmony (yet) which is one of the graphic design principles. They were inclined to use fonts based on what they like, even more, they use them almost in same size, without considering the harmony, balance and yet headlines, sub headlines and content.

Choosing the type of fonts has some consideration, which are:
- the style of design (classic, modern or futuristic style)
- what design is about (the product)
- the size of the media
- how much information to put on

Try not to use too much kind of font on 1 page, two different types of fonts is the best. You can play around by make it bold, italic, use different size or different colors to make them looks vary.

By: anton ardjanggi / www.anarddesign.com

top 7 Font Categories

The exercise of classifying fonts is not an easy one. New fonts are constantly introduced and there is no standard within the typographic arts.

The classification system described here is based on the book Typographic Design: Form and Communication by Rob Carter, Ben Day, and Philip Meggs. This classic text groups typeface styles into six manageable categories covering their origin and use. I've added a seventh category for decorative fonts. Some systems use as many as 30 different categories.

1) Old Style Fonts
Early font style from the Venetian artisan Aldus Mantius. Characterized by its bracketed serifs and angled weight emphasis on the rounded forms and tops of lowercase ascenders.
Examples: Garamond, Minion, Goudy, Palatino

2) Italic (Script) Fonts
Italic letters slant to the right. Some italics are based on handwriting with connected strokes and are called scripts.
Examples: Snell roundhand, Brush Script, Garamond Italic

3) Transitional Fonts
Serif fonts developed in the mid-1700s when typestyles evolved from Old Style to Modern. Examples: Times, Baskerville, Caslon

4) Modern Fonts
These typefaces have extreme contrasts between thick and thin strokes. Modern typefaces evolved from Transitional styles late in the 1700s.
Examples: Bodoni, Didot

5) Slab Serif Fonts
Slab-serif fonts, developed during the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, are bold and easy to read with large, square serifs.
Examples: Aachen, Clarendon, New Century Schoolbook, Rockwell

6) Sans Serif Fonts
First introduced in the early 1800s sans serif typefaces did not become widely used until after World War II. French for "not" sans serif fonts do not have structural details on the end of strokes. Stroke weights are often uniform.
Examples: Univers, Helvetica, Futura, Verdana

7) Display Fonts
Type that is usually used in headlines to attract attention or as decorative initial capitals. Examples: Blockhead, Funkhouse, Hobo, Rosewood

By: Mary Beth & Paul Trautwein / http://graphicdesign.about.com/

David Carson - Bio

David Carson is principal and chief designer of David Carson Design, Inc. with offices in New York City and Charleston, SC.

Carson graduated with "honors and distinction" from San Diego state university, where he received a BFA degree in sociology. A former professional surfer, he was ranked #9 in the world during his college days. Numerous groups including the New York Type Directors Club, American Center for Design and I.D. magazine have recognized his studio's work with a wide range of clients in both the business and arts worlds. Carson and his work have been featured in over 180 magazine and newspaper articles around the world, including a feature in Newsweek magazine, and a front page article in the new york times . London-based Creative Review magazine dubbed Carson "Art Director of the Era." The American Center for Design (Chicago) called his work on Ray Gun magazine "the most important work coming out of America." His work on Beach Culture magazine won "Best Overall Design" and "Cover of the Year" from the Society of Publication Designers in New York.

Carson's first book, with Lewis Blackwell, The End of Print, (forward by David Byrne) is the top selling graphic design book of all time, selling over 200,000 copies, and printed in 5 different languages. The work featured in The End of Print is the subject of various one-man exhibitions throughout Europe and Latin America, Asia and Australia. Carson's other titles include 2nd Sight, Fotografiks (with design historian Philip Meggs). He has two recently released books, TREK and The Book of Probes with Marshall McLuhan. David is also art director for the Mcluhan estate("the medium is the message").

Carson lectures extensively throughout the world, as well as at colleges throughout the U.S., including Cranbrook, ARTcenter, Notre dame, RISD and Cal Arts. he has had numerous one man exhibitions of his work worldwide, and has spoken at over 100professional symposiums, including "Designer As Editor" at the Design Institute in Amsterdam. He teaches a week long workshop at the school of visual arts in NYC each summer.

The International Center for Photography (NY) singled out Carson as the "Designer of the Year" for his use of photography and design. Print Magazine proclaimed his work "Brilliant," while USA Today described it as "visually stunning," adding that his design of Ray Gun Magazine "may actually get young people reading again.

"Typography, a title published by Graphis magazine (NY), lists Carson as a "Master of Typography." I.D. magazine chose Carson for their list of "America's most innovative designers". A feature in Newsweek magazine said of Carson "he changed the public face of graphic design". The graphic design publication Emigre devoted an entire issue to Carson, the only American designer to be so honored in the magazine's history. And in April 2004, London based creative review magazine calls David, "the most famous graphic designer on the planet". David recently picked up 4 gold awards at the Charleston ADDY awards, including a "special judges award" for "professionalism".

In the past few years, Carson has branched out into film and television to direct commercials and videos. He directed the launch commercials for Lucent technologies and teamed up with William Burroughs in Carson's short film, "The End of Print". He also collaborated with Harvard Business School professor John Kao on a documentary entitled "The Art and Discipline of Creativity." David designed the worldwide branding campaign for Microsoft in 1998, as well as the worldwide advertising for Giorgio Armani (Milan). He has appeared in advertisements endorsing Apple Computers, Samsung monitors and various paper companies. Carson has art directed and designed Surfer, twSkateboarding, twSnowboarding, Beach Culture, and Ray Gun magazines. He has an extensive list of international clients: Nine Inch nails, Toyota, Mercedes Benz, Bank of Montreal, Microsoft, Quiksilver, Meg Ryan, David Byrne, Bush, Pepsi, and Xerox.

David is featured in both "The History of Graphic Design" by Philip Meggs, as well as"The Encyclopedia of Surfing" by Matt Warsaw.

He currently serves as Creative Director for the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, and recently designed a special issue of Surfing Magazine titled "Explorations" which came out in July of '04. He also recently directed a television commercial for the progressive UMPQUA Bank in Seattle, Washington.

David's work continues to be subjective and largely driven by intuition, with an emphasis on reading material before designing it, and experimenting with ways to communicate in a variety of mediums. Carson remains a hands on designer, keeping his studio small and mobile.

Source: http://www.davidcarsondesign.com