Whats My Type? (OUGD403 Study Task 1)

I was asked to answer a set of nine questions about myself in order to give me an insight about me and my personality. We were then given the six fundamental fonts from Massimo  Vignelli's canon and asked to relate one of the six fonts to myself from the way I answered the nine questions and then from this create a three minute presentation with an insight into the questions, an insight into the fonts and then choose the font of which I believe relates most to me and explain why i believe this.

The six fonts from Massimo Vignelli's cannon are;

Garamond

Bodoni

Century Expanded

Futura

Times Roman

Helvetica

The questions we were asked were;

When are you the happiest?

When listening to music of any kind, Im a massive fan of all genre's of music.

What is your greatest fear?

Spiders

What is your happiest memory?

Waking up on Christmas as a child

What was your most embarrassing moment?

Jumping off a swing trying to look cool and falling and breaking my leg

What makes you unhappy?

When people around me aren't getting along

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Originally I wanted to be an architect

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

I quite like to watch geordie shore in my free time.

What is your favourite hobby?

My favourite hobby must be either playing my guitar or playing rugby.

Where is your favourite pace?

The United States of America must be my favourite place to visit, more specifically California.

The first of the six fonts that Massimo Vignelli suggests are the only fonts actually needed when creating graphic design is Garamond. Garamond also happens to be the oldest of the six fonts too. This font of today is to be believed that it has origins from two different locations the first being that it was designed by Claude Garamond in 1533 and was designed in a very different way to the other typefaces this was almost a crucial part of the first humanist typefaces. The second being that it may derive from the work of Jean Jannon in circa 1550’s of who took his influence massively from the work of Claude Garamond.

The second of the fonts suggested by Massimo Vingelli is the typeface Bodoni. Bodoni was named after its creator Giamattista Bodoni, an Italian National in 1788. Giamattista was often referred to as the King or Printers. The Bodoni font loosely follows the ideas of another font Baskerville designed around 30 years earlier. Bodoni was part of a big fashion for using typefaces with stronger contrasts between thick and thins, un-bracketed serifs and stronger vertical stress in the 18th Century causing all fonts that didn’t follow these rules to become the old style typefaces.

Century Expanded is a font of which didn’t come too far after the original of its kind made called Century. This expansion on the original font was designed by the Benton's, father Linn Boyd Benton and son Morris Fuller Benton. This font was designed originally as a wider version of the normal century font for Theodore De Vinne’s press and it was called Century Broadface. In the 1900 is was released for general typeface youth and called Century Expanded. Since that day Century Expanded has been used as the type face for the New York Daily news.

Futura was designed during the times of the Bauhaus way of design. The typeface was designed by the designer Paul Renner around 1924/1926 and although he wasn’t actually a member of the Bauhaus he shared the majority of their views that a new modern typeface should reflect on modernity and should not be designed as a rival of a previous typeface. It was commercially released in 1927 by the Bauer type foundry. When designing Futura Renner avoided non-essential elements such as frills and serifs. The most major way Futura has been used it it was the typeface chosen for the writing on the commemorative plaque left by the astronauts on the moon in 1960.

The penultimate font named by Massimo Vingelli is Times Roman of which was released for use in 1931. The names Times comes from the origin of its creation. It was originally created by a typographer called Stanley Morison and and funded by the Times of London newspaper to create a new typeface and that is where it takes its name from, The Times of London newspaper. An advertising artist called Victor Lardent oversaw the creating of the typeface and drew the letterforms. Two type companies owned parts to the font and therefore monotype company now labels it as Times New Roman and Linotype now advertised it as Times Roman.

Finally the last of the typefaces is called Helvetica. Helvetica was originally designed by Swiss nationals Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas type foundry in 1957. Helvetica was quite closely based around a Swiss font called Schelter-Grotesk. It was designed with a general neutral sense, so that the typeface itself carries no meaning. It became popular in a post-war Europe where companies wanted to go away from decorative fonts and more toward a straight forward typeface. Over the years it has been used for a lot of very big work such as the logos of American apparel to Microsoft and also such big projects like the underground system in New York.

Massimo Vingelli  believes that only the six prior fonts are needed in the creation and design of work. The first things I would like to do is eliminate the typefaces of which are very much the opposite of the typefaces I relate to. These typefaces are Garamond, Bodoni, Century Expanded and Times Roman. I am ruling against these fonts straight away because they are totally opposite to the fonts I like to use and am related too. I say this because I am not a fan of the overzealous nature to these fonts through the serifs and the frills in the font. I much prefer a font that is a lot more simple of which leads me on to…

After looking into all of the type faces suggested by Massimo Vingelli I seem to be stuck between two for which I think is most relates to my personality. My decision is between the typefaces Helvetica and Futura. My reason I say it is between terse two fonts is that they both have a straightforward, simple and sleek look to them which is much more related to the style of work I like to do where as the frilly non-essential nature of the other four fonts aren't really suitable for me. Although I would say that my decision will go to Helvetica as can relate to the typeface in the way that I agree that the use of text in work is mainly carry a message and therefore the use of plainer texts leaves the onlooker in no doubt that the meaning is in the artwork design and not the text in the artwork.