Good Use of Ligature

This week's assignment was to find ligatures put to good use. It was surprisingly hard to find some, but I did end up finding two in an issue of CosmoGirl magazine at my house around 10:00 on Thursday, October 29th. The first one here, the fragrance advertisement for Hilary Duff (its actually the second picture, sorry), may be hard to see. The "t" and the "h" on the word with both share the same stroke; the ending stroke of the "h" loops back over to the "t" to cross itself. I thought it was very clever to use that same stroke in both letters; a separate cross stroke on the "t" might look weird, especially with the cursive like typeface. Another example I found was for the popular company FILA. Here, the "L" connects itself with the one leg of the "A." This one, I felt, might be more well known than the other example. It is also a more obvious ligature than the other example.

Poor Kerning

For this week's type journal, my assignment was to find an example of bad kerning. Once you finally figure out what kerning is, it is easy to find poor examples of it. Once I arrived home from bowling practice today, I went on a search in my room to find an example. The example I found was on a plaque I had received for winning the county championship in my junior year of high school. The picture was taken at about 10:45 on Thursday, October 22nd. Overall, I feel the letters are spaced too far apart; the "G" especially needs to fit in tighter with the "A" and the "L" next to it. The best spacing on the word is probably in the last two letters, the "E" and the "S," but even those can be taken in a little bit. I feel that if the letters fit tighter, the word "EAGLES" would read much better.

"Bad" Typography

This week's challenge technically wasn't a challenge for me; bad typography exists everywhere. Anything could contribute to bad typography: a font not suited for its purpose, a font that really shouldn't be a font (ex. Papyrus.), poor kerning, poor tracking, poor leading... the list goes on and on. Walking around campus today, I found one particularly hideous poster in the SUB; it just so happened to be in Papyrus. This caught my eye right away, even though it was surrounded by dozens of other posters. For one thing, the poster uses way too much of the Papyrus font, which the use of the font itself is a sin. Not only are the headings in it, but some of the smaller type has it as well. The font isn't the only bad thing though; the poster in generally is busy. On the left hand side there is vertical type, then next to that there is a heading at the top, then a subheading, etc. The KU logo and some cheesy clip art picture also contribute to the busy and trite poster. Overall, it is just a bad piece of typography.

"Good Typography"

This week, the task at hand was trying to find "good typography;" a pretty opened ended concept. I had the opportunity over this past weekend to go on the art bus trip to New York City and visit the Met. The area the Met is located has hundreds upon hundreds of examples of good type; it was so hard to choose only one to take a picture of, especially since my camera was about to die any minute. Towards the end of my trip, I found myself walking down Lexington, where there are a good amount of retail shops and restaurants. I came upon this nice little ice cream place and decided to take a picture of it. The name, Tasti-D-Lite, I think appealed to me just as much as the type itself, which is actually quite simple. The sans-serif font and the blue/ white stroke doesn't compete with the clever name of the store. The small logo of the ice cream cone thats next to it fits in nicely with the chosen font; the colors coordinate and it reiterates the fact that the store sells "tasty delights."

This picture was taken on Saturday, October 5th at around 6:00 PM in New York City on Lexington and 84th Street.

Hand-Rendered Typography

It's the third week of my typography journal and my work load still hasn't gotten any lighter. I wish I could do these sooner in the week, but my life has been occupied by thumbnails, thumbnails, and more thumbnails that it has made it impossible. But anyway, my post this week is on hand-rendered typography. Looking around campus, I couldn't really find a good example. Honestly, most of the hand-written type was poor, and I felt it not worthy to show on here. When I came home, however, I realized that my mom has many country prints which include hand written type. This picture is one of them; it was taken around 7:30 at my house on Thursday, October 1st. Looking at it closely, I could see the pencil lines that are underneath the paint. It, also, was the first thing I saw walking into my door today. Even though I originally wanted something of a poster to put on here, the rustic quality of this crafty print does the job just fine.