Week 26: Introduction to Typography

Today we carried out an exercise related to typography, we were introduced to what typography is and what each font can represent a different meaning within a magazine article. We analysed the different conventions within a magazine article and these conventions included, Header, Grid and Columns, I helped analyse an article within a magazine and we analysed it by placing these different conventions on the article, from this exercise I learnt about the conventions used within a magazine article. This included the different types of typography, I have learnt that the modern types of font used within graphics is Sans Serif and the more traditional typography is Serif, and that behind every font there is a meaning and this shows the audience who the magazine or article is aimed at through the typography used.

I carried out an exercise within Adobe Illustrator to learn about the effects which I could use on different fonts to create different effects, I am writing a report on the process in which I went through to create the different effects within the different types of fonts, this will visually show the process which I went through to create the different effects to the fonts. I created a new project within Illustrator and I created 5 different texts using different fonts and for each font I created a different effect for it. The first effect which I created was a 3D Bevel Effect, this effect created a simple 3D Boxed Font and this stands out because it is bold and in the font which I used it stood out clearly, this would be an effective font to use within a magazine article as this would appeal to the target audience of students and would catch their attention. The next effect which I created on a different font of Arial was the drop shadow effect, this showed the effect of a shadow behind the writing, this was effective and may be an effect I would consider for use within my student magazine as this emphasised and drew attention to the font which the effect was being used on.

The next effect which i created with the Elephant Font was the feathered effect, this blurred the font slightly and this therefore made the font harder to read and outlined the font slightly, this did create a good effect for an article which it can be related to well, and could be an effect I could use within my Student Magazine. The next effect I used on the font Calibri, I created the inner glow effect, which highlighted the inner font and is a very good effect, and is similar to the Feathered effect and highlights the font. The last effect which I created was the 3D Rotation effect, this is similar to the ordinary 3D effect but allows you to rotate the font to give an extra effect of the total 3D, within creating all of these effects you can change and adjust the amount of effect and preview what the font would look like with the effect added to it. Once I created these effects and put them into a typography mood board I saved this document as a Adobe Illustrator file and I then exported it as a Photoshop File, and then saved this file as a JPEG. The reason why I exported this into Photoshop and then saved as a JPEG is because the AI file was too large to print out as the printer would not be able to cope with the work flow of big files, therefore as the graphics which I was creating within Illustrator were very good quality, Vector Graphics, within Photoshop the fonts would not be at this quality and this is the reason why they are exported into Photoshop from Illustrator.



Image of my Typography Mood Board with Different Effects Used


Overall, today I have learnt a lot about Typography and I will take into consideration the effects which I can use within my products related to my student magazine and I can complete my process document explaining the different effects and how I applied these.

I have also updated my Skills Profile on my Blog with the skills which I have gained through the exercise today.