Visual Communication, Typography

On Monday, we began to look at the pathway of Visual Communication which covers a wide range of specialist areas such as graphic design, design and communication and typography. In particular today we looked at typography and how different text fonts, sizes and colours can change the message of a sentence, phrase or word.

Particularly when trying to communicate certain messages different techniques are used. For example if it was a quiet piece of text just the outline of the type would be shown rather than filled in. On the other hand reversed text can really stand out of the dark background and create quite an impact. Type can have lots of variations to convey all sorts of messages. Other things to take into account are, negative space, composition, lower and upper case.

The font of the type can also determine the meaning behind a piece of text. Fonts are divided into two catorgories, serif and sans serif. A serif is a font with 'curly' bits on the end of letters, like Times New Roman. A more traditional and formal font type. The other type, sans serif, doesn't have the 'curly' bits on the end and so had a much more modern feel to it aswell as being practical for signing and important messages.

We tried our hand at typography today. We were given the title A Day in the Life of... and had to use a passage of a memory, journey or future dream of someone else in the class to construct a sentence to fit with the mood and feeling of the piece and then communicate the message in the sentence by using different typography skills. The passage I was given was a memory of a family holiday in Florida.

I was trying to communicate the description of how exhausted and hungry the girl in the passage remebers her family being after a long day out at theme parks. I chose outlined type as it gives an impression of being empty like an empty stomach.

This sentence is trying to describe a holiday photo but not actually being a photogrpah at all. Holiday photographs are normally of cheesy smiles and good times so the 'happy' is in capital letters to try and show just how happy the family seemed to be on holiday in the memory. Also the reversed type made the text stand out aswell as being able to fit it into a camera film style, which is a negative image like the reversed type.