What can I say about typography? For me, it’s a love and hate relationship. I can spend hours on a design, love it while working on it, and hate it by the time it’s done. The hardest part is trying to decide what style to go with and or what to actually do. There are steps you can take though to help you decide what to design and hopefully save you time. I’m going to tell you the process I use with a July typography that was previously designed for our JSD social as an example.
Get Inspired
This is by far the most important step. GET INSPIRED! Lets be honest here no one knows what they want to design, I know I don’t. Let me rephrase that, you may have an idea of what you want but it may not be solid…yet. Unless you’re some “design god” that designs without inspiration and is able to create beautiful work, you will need to go get inspired. Oh wait, I almost forgot to say this. If you are a “design god” I HATE YOU, STOP READING MY BLOG. Here is a list of a resources that I used (that you can use too) that got me moving on the July typography. It may seem like overkill on research but trust me you will find inspiration. I once designed a flyer for a client that was inspired by a restaurant menu… a restaurant menu.
Google Searches I used the search terms “typography inspiration” and “typography poster inspiration” “poster inspiration”
Pinterest
Communication Arts Magazine
Typography Books
Find the Right Font
So, you found something you like, right? Ok. Now what font do you use? What typeface style are they using? Is it a serif, sans-serif, script, etc., use what you see as a starting point. Now you might think to yourself, “man I only have these crappy pre-installed fonts that came with my computer and these don’t work for my design I wont be able to do anything cool” but I’m here to tell you that you are WRONG buddy! There are other ways to get fonts, for free. You can download fonts from Google Fonts and or DaFont. So, go and get you some free fonts man. If it’s free it’s for me, right? Damn right! Now back to the design. The inspiration I found used a sans-serif font so guess what I used? You got it! A script font. I kid, I kid, I’m making sure you guys are still paying attention. I used a sans-serif font called HFF Modern Strand that I downloaded from Dafont. Here it is in its basic form before the makeover, before the polishing, before the adjustments. Isn’t it boring?
Experiment
Inspiration. Check. Font. Check. Now let the fun/horrible part begin! Experimenting!! This is where you are probably going to be spending most of your time. Experiment with color combinations, strokes, shapes and sizes. Combine different stroke colors with solid fills or use shapes to give it a different look and feel. Let your imagination run wild. I usually choose between two or three colors to play with and use those colors on different options. Here are two options I came up with.
The Final Design
The final design came from a combination of both options shown earlier. I took the solid shapes from the first and combined it with the stroke lines from the second. Added a few more elements to give it a space/geometric look.
JSD Team
For over a year, we've created some cool typography every month. It has allowed us to be as creative as possible without any boundaries. From Sofias cool exploration of patterns and text manipulation to Merediths unique hand stitched February design. We all let our creativity shine. Now it’s your turn, get inspired, find the right font, experiment and see what you can create.
Kommentarer