A Designer's Eye: Typography - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Although it's been a few months, I'm ready to jump back into the saddle and start contributing to the blog-o-sphere again! So, without further ado, here we go...

Over the course of this last semester, while taking a Typography class in school, I came across some interesting example of good, bad and mediocre typographic solutions to design problems. Some of them could have been spectacular with a few small tweaks, while some were just terrible.

Here are few of the ones that really stood out:

The above example is one of the less-than-successful examples I found. Aside from the obvious use of random colors and typefaces, the choice of all centered text within the center white text block is hard on the eye and doesn't align in any meaningful manner. Although I believe the choice of colors and typefaces was done purposefully, it still looks random and unrefined.


These next two examples I found to be very interesting. Both make use of horizontal lines to break the letters within the design, but each one seems unfinished.

In the first example, I fail to see why the designer chose to use a lowercase "e" in the logo while every other letter is capitalized. This very easily would have worked (and been more successful) with a italicized capital "E". Aside from that, I really like the path that the horizontal line creates, leading not only the eye, but the bike that is a part of the logo, throughout the piece.

In the second example, I like the way the idea of a horizontal line breaking the word "Fraction" through the middle, but feel like the line is poorly placed. If the line was widened to the size of the crossbar in the "F", I feel that this would be a more successful solution. The letters would still be recognizable, because the is no other letter in the alphabet that looks like a capital "F", and the design wouldn't look so awkward. I would have also rearranged the type so that each line fit on a piece of the stacked fruit. The lone "A" looks out of place with the longer and larger lines of text...

Finally, this example if one of the most successful that I found. The use of lower case letters throughout, the justified text and the select use of color to draw attention and connect to the theme were all excellent choices. The use of color was not overbearing, nor was is inappropriate. It was an all-around well designed piece of typography.