As a graphic designer it was becoming an increasing annoyance of the lack of general awareness of typography. The awareness stems from what the general public are conscious of seeing: what attracts their eye in the environment and what their limited knowledge allows them to understand of what typography is, as well as the various applications. People are aware of simple typographic applications seen in advertising billboards, shop fascias, and packaging, rather than the unconventional typographic applications they see everyday, like in newspapers, magazines, flyers handed to them on the side of the road and homemade notices. The extent of the visual communication in our daily lives is endless and people fail to realize that things like stickers, street signs, graffiti, etc…play just a big of a role as the more commonly recognized typopgraphic applications.
I created this intervention to bring an awareness to typographic applications that people wouldn’t ordinarily pay attention to. For example, in my opinion people fail to realise that graffiti is a considered application, used with similar consideration to that of any other recognized, more traditional application. Typography and its many applications do not have to be conventional. So by using examples such as posters and flyers I plan to show what some of these typefaces can look like and how they can be applied. On this blog I hope to further educate and inform you, the general public, about unconventional typefaces and unconventional typographic applications.
Below is an example of an interactive poster that I placed at The Greenside Design School. I used this interactive poster as tool to show, that the words the students created with the lego could be considered an unconventional typographic application. I also used the poster as a starting point to introduce the ‘view-finder’ I had created to the students and how to make use of it. This ‘view-finder’ is meant as a tool to encourage the students to go out into their environment and find unconventional typographic applications. To then take a photo of it, whether they thought it was legible or illegible and then email it back to me at blacksheeptype@yahoo.com. I would then take these pictures and post them onto flickr. com and encourage people to comment! You can follow the link below…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36535886@N03/
Please feel free to take a look around my blog, make loads of comments and ask even more questions. It is time that the art of typography in ALL is conventional and unconventional glory is regonised and celebrated.
Hello again… I’ve been looking at type more intensely since coming across this blog. I was wondering about your use of the word “unconventional”… From what I can tell you are focusing on font types/shapes that are unconventional? Or is it also “conventional” type used in “unconventional” ways?
I was listening to Radiohead “In Rainbows” and the track listing on the back had what “conventional” design would consider horrible kerning. Now Radiohead has never really done much “conventional” and I think their album cover designs are amazing… Please give me some thoughts
Thanx
Thanks for your comment…
My intervention started with me exploring unconventional typography, focusing on typefaces that are obscure and what wouldn’t be considered a typeface. After looking into it however – I found that as designers we design within a context and that sometimes an unconventional typeface wouldn’t help our communication so we have to strike a balance. So by using ‘conventional’ typography in an unconventional way we get to bend the rules to suit and help our end design solution.