Our lecture today was solely focused on typography. Some of the class was a summary of information we already knew as a mini refresher, but there was also new information I learnt as well. For a section of the lecture we split off into small groups and reviewed different design movements. My team focused on the Dadaism movement. Below is the board we created on Mural to visualise themes of the movement and collate background information of this design era.
I felt that seeing the Dada's interpretation of typography to be really inspiring. To the untrained eye some of these type experiments may look disorganised but there is evidence of design thinking within these compositions especially in the earlier works. As the movement advanced you can tell that in the later work, designers chose to understand the rules but break them. This creates some incredibly dynamic work whilst not following conventional design rules that had been laid out at this time.
Project Typeface Decisions & Insight
During the lecture we also looked at the notion of how different typefaces have different connotative meanings. This means essentially that no typeface is truely neutral is it carries an association with it. For example, Fette Fraktur is a blackletter typeface designed by the German punchcutter Johann Christian Bauer and was developed to reference a handwriting style from the Renaissance. However, in the 20th it was adopted by the Nazi regime and so became associated with Nazism. After the war the typeface stopped being used due to this association, until it was readopted by Urban street artist style in Los Angeles in the 2000's.
This is an issue I had not thought of before, obviously there are more visible associations, for example if you are using comic sans you are most likely speaking to children with your design. However, the fact that by choosing a specific font I could accidentally align my work with Nazi values or a font that does not align with my project aims is bizarre and quite frightening. It makes me want to go back over all the type I've ever used and research them all to make sure there are no shady associations. As result of this new information, this gives me the opportunity to be even more thorough with the design choices I make and creating more well rounded designs. With that being said I think I'll be skipping over Comic Sans in my search for an appropriate typeface to suit my target audience and my output.
In regards, my own project there is the opportunity to explore Irish and Celtic style typefaces similar to the one below, which is Ceanannas by Michael Everson. I had originally utilised a similar typeface in my project proposal, as a jumping off point for creating a project with Irish connections. However, at the moment I am exploring whether it is necessary to include this style of type in my project. With my project I am trying to modernise the delivery method which Irish mythology is thought through, and my target audience may not respond to this type. There is the opportunity to try find a more modern version of these staple Irish/Celtic typefaces, to include the older type and it's cultural importance but present in a way that my target audience may respond to more. I will be exploring this more over the coming weeks in development of my output.
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