be rad…be foolish

About a week ago I saw online there was an unofficial contest to redesign the food label.  Since this kinda goes right up my alley, and I don’t have a whole lot to do at the moment, I figured I’d submit something.

It should be pretty self-explanatory.  I have the four icons/badges at the top with the thought food producers would start making foods that would meet those parameters so they could brand their products with the most badges.  The ingredients list is at the top–organic ingredients are green and italicized, bad ingredients are bolded.  The next section uses a little bit of data visualization and color coding with an easy to read grid below.  The grid places the emphasis on the number/amount.  And at the bottom is a representation of where the food falls on the glycemic index.

Designed this back in February.  Was going to drop the opacity really low and have it printed on the back of my business card.  Decided not to do it, thought it’d make the card too busy.  But I stumbled on it just a minute ago and figured I’d post it.

It’s relatively interesting.  At least for myself.

I just finished the iMedia Showcase invite.  Was happy to design it with a few minutes here and there over the past week or so.  It was a nice break from working on capstone.  I used Trajan–inspired by AKQA’s website–as the display type and District Thin for the text.  District Thin has a pretty high x-height and was more readable than some other thin, san-serif fonts I considered.  Desaturated the blacks to various degrees for the text; obviously left the company logos as they are.

I think it turned out well.  Wanted to play with whitespace and a little bit of grid design.

*The logos aren’t pixelated on the print version, just this screenshot.

In my visual aesthetics class we studied a few different schools of art.  One was Formalism.  I wanted to create something that could be considered Formalist using type.

As individual letterforms, Didot has some all time greats.  I chose the W because there is something ‘happy’ about how the Didot W looks.  I wanted to play around with basic iterations of the W and came up with lines of different font sizes.

I’ve also been interested for a few months in how graphics/objects appear on our screens as we scroll up and down, left and right.  After I finished the image,  I found that if you zoom in on the PDF and scroll up and down, it gives a pretty cool effect.  Or zoom in closer and scroll left to right; try it with a few different size W’s centered on your screen.    Try it here!

*and let me officially state this is not in any way a tribute to our 43rd President…and never would be.

I’m a font nerd.  I wouldn’t be writing this if I weren’t.  I recognize fonts everywhere.  Futura while standing in line at the Post Office, Helvetica (seemingly everywhere), of course Times New Roman, Comic Sans (unfortunately) and Copperplate Gothic.

Either I’m weirdly tuned-in to Copperplate Gothic because it’s on my mind (one of those weird ‘the universe is connecting us’ kind of things) or it really is almost everywhere.  I saw it recently on the business card for one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to – I almost offered to redesign their card, doubt that would have been received well.  It’s the font of choice at one of the best coffee shops in Chapel Hill, NC.  It’s on the notice to turn off cell phones at my gym.  Alas, it’s even embossed on the back of my beloved, soft-back Moleskin drawing book…that one hurts.

See, I can’t stand Copperplate Gothic.  And it’s all because of the serifs.  I can appreciate a font’s history and it’s usage, but not Copperplate Gothic.

It’s cartoonish.  It takes the informality of a san-serif and tries to dress it up with ill-placed serifs.  There is a disconnect.  Without the serifs, the font makes sense.  It’s readable, it’s ‘heavy’ and imposing, strong line-weight, wide horizontal axis.  All the requirements for a reliable san-serif type.

But the serifs come off as an afterthought.  Their proportion is out of sync with the rest of the font.  Perhaps Fredric Goudy, the font’s creator, was attempting something new in type design – which I appreciate.  But it’s glaringly wrong.  Either the line weight is too strong or the serifs too small.  The x-height is ‘off’ or the spacing is.

Take a look at the ‘E’ for example.  As a letter, it’s unbalanced.  The balance shifts right, ironically, because of the small serifs.  The serifs don’t exist in harmony with the rest of the glyph.  The bar on the ‘L’ is too long, only to be exaggerated by the blunt serifs.  And where some glyphs have a general rectangle shape they should have a square shape to maintain the aesthetic and vice-versa.

I see all the letter forms and want to chop and trim the serifs.  Copperplate Gothic is begging to be a san-serif; it’s spirit is a san-serif.

I understand why it is so widely used.  It comes off as distinguished, historic, strong and masculine.  It is readable.  But there are so many other options for a typeface.  It’s a shame so many people are drawn to it and it’s so ubiquitous.  It has become the ‘go-to’ font for those seeking something strong, distinguished and readable.  Why not take an extra 15 minutes in choosing a typeface?  There’s the obvious Trajan or why not play around with all-caps Century or Book Antiqua or (ironically) all-caps Goudy Old Style?

Is it so prevalent because it isn’t as stodgy as a Garamond or Caslon, as pretentious as a Didot, as simple as a Helvetica?  Maybe.  Copperplate Gothic certainly exists in its own category.  And while I actually can appreciate Copperplate Gothic as a singularity in the world of typefaces, it sits on the fence too much.  It wants to be a san-serif but is holding on to an older aesthetic with the points of its little serifs.