Typography I – Type Specimen Book

The Type Specimen Book was our final project for Typography I and by far my favorite Graphic Design project ever. Our goal for this project was to produce a 16 pages (plus cover page) specimen book. We had to integrate the concepts and skills that we learned throughout the semester in this multi-page document. This project gave me the opportunity to explore the creative and production aspects of the typographic grid, as well as to learn the fundamental principles and protocols of publishing design.

Unlike in the Typographic Poster, in this assignment, I was very confident using InDesign and I knew a lot of tricks and techniques that helped execute this project effectively. I definitely took advantage of the fact that Trade Gothic Typeface has an extensive family and decided to illustrate and showcase the differences and similarities throughout this book. Although this project took a very long time, I enjoyed working on it so very much. It challenged me, but seeing the final product made it worth it.

Typography I – Typographic Poster

The objective of the Typographic Poster assignment was to focus on designing a poster for a type workshop using typography as the main focus. Professor Lorena Howard-Sheridan wanted us to explore different typographic aspects of design such as: hierarchy, visual structure, line spacing and other basic typographic style rules.

This project introduced me to Adobe InDesign. I did have Adobe software experience prior to taking this class, but InDesign was a project that I had yet to work with. Looking back at my Typographic Poster, not being familiar with InDesign made it very difficult for me to create an effective composition. I remember working on it and struggling to successfully fulfill the purpose of this assignment.

My Typographic Poster was very simple; I did not take advantage of the opportunity to play with different typographic aspects of design. However, I feel like I effectively managed to create something that easy to read and follow. I took advantage of the term “hierarchy” in order to highlight the most important information. I knew that students, faculty and staff rarely pay attention to posters with tons of text, so I wanted to give them highlight the important information.

Typography I – Type is Space

Type is Space was my very first graphic design project. Professor Lorena Howard-Sheridan told us “Type is Space” and gave us the task to develop a collection of typographic compositions, in which different concepts were going to be expressed through the use of type and space. I created a total of six different compositions but for the purpose of this assessment, I picked my best two.

For the first composition pictured in this assessment, I wanted to create something simple but powerful. I decided to write the word space in a diagonal line with each letter being a different size. I also wanted to play with the negative space since the composition had to represent the phrase “Type is Space.”

For the second composition, I played with repetition, negative space, and size. I took the idea from the first composition but this time, I followed a vertical pattern.

Overall, this project gave me the opportunity to experiment with the form and counter form used in the word “Space.” This project also challenge because I had to create a composition that convey the meaning of the word, making the finished composition legible and easy to understand.