OUGD406 - Studio Brief 2 - Study Task 3 - Typographic Treatment

From the feedback from the cover analysis the words that people used to describe it were:

• Energetic
• Masculine
• Dark
• Intriguing
• Independant
• Chaotic
• Collaged
• Organised Chaos

From this I took "Chaotic" and thought that I could design a chaotic, post modernist cover and to contrast it a ordered modernist cover.

I started by experimenting with having the text slanted. I really like the use of white on a black background but I feel like this is illegible from a distance due to the cut out nature of this font. And the other geometric font, black on white, doesn't suit the mood of Typographica or the message that I was trying to portray.

Next I tried the Modernist/Post Modernist approach. For my modernist design I contrasted Helvetica bold for the title with Helvetica regular for the author's name and simply left aligned it at the top of the page to create lots of negative space. I really like the simplicity of this design as it is like a "says what it does on the tin" kind of design, it doesn't boast or brag it is just practical and legible. In contrast to this I was inspired slightly by David Carson's work, and created a ransom style title using contrasting fonts and font sizes with a mixture of upper and lower case to make it look chaotic. I then put the authors name in the corner as if to imply he is unimportant and that the book focuses on "Typographica" as it should. I picked these two designs as my finals and printed them out for people to write about. These were the comments that I received:

MODERNIST:

• Ordered
• Slick
• Simple
• Boring
• Unfinished
• Swiss international typographic style
• Minimal
• Uninspiring
• Simplistic

POST MODERNIST:

• Broad range
• Playful
• Busy
• Too Busy
• Ordered Chaos
• Random
• Funky
• Wild 
• Fun
• Ransom
• Varied
• Post-modern
• Hectic
• Experimental
• Eclectic
• Spontaneous
• Child-like
• Interesting

I think that only one person got my message bang on the head and that was whoever wrote "ordered chaos" as that was the look that I was going for in my post-modern design. I got a lot more response for the post modern one too, so I might use this one as one of my ideas for the interim critique.