Choosing the Right Typefaces: How to Enhance Your Message with Type

1. Promo: This class is for anyone interested in typography and typefaces and how choosing the right typeface can make or break a design. We will talk about typeface classifications, their personality and what they communicate to the viewer and we will also look at how to use type within logo design and combining multiple typefaces together. By the end of this class, you will have a new-found confidence when it comes to using type. So whether you are a graphic designer, illustrator, patent designer, greeting card designer, or an animator or a filmmaker. Everything you learn will help you use type effectively within your daily projects. So, I hope to see you in class. 2. Introduction: Hi, everyone, thanks so much for joining this class, Choosing the Right Typeface. For any of you who've taken my previous classes, you're never a bit of a type geek and I love typography. Just to give you a little bit of a background about me, my name is Fei Brown and I'm a designer, an animator from the UK. My love for typography started on my degree course. I did a graphic design degree and we didn't even touch a computer in the first year. We learned a lot about old techniques for setting type, and we looked at a lot of typefaces and their history. Then in my first job out of art college, I worked with a good friend called David Earls, who wrote this book about Designing Typefaces, and he even included a section on how to design your own typeface and based on my handwriting there. His love for all things type wore off on me and I became an official type geek. Here I am now hoping to share some of my passion and knowledge with you in this class, focusing mainly on typefaces as typography is a huge area to cover all in itself. Let's take a look at what we will be covering in this class. Firstly, I will set your project brief and you will have three potential projects to choose from. Then I will give you a brief introduction to typographical terms that will be used throughout this class. Then we will talk about a subject I love the Personality of a Typeface and how they can communicate different things. We will then talk about how to use type within logo design, and then I'll cover a subject I've had so many people ask me questions about, which is combining multiple typefaces and how to make them work together. I'll also give you some pointers on where to buy and get free typefaces, and then we will briefly talk about type hierarchy and body copy. Throughout the class, there will be some project steps to complete, so check out my sample project in the project gallery if you need some pointers too. Let's crack on and start with choosing a project brief in the next video. 3. Project briefs: I want you to get the most out of this class as possible and for that reason, I've given you three projects to choose from. Hopefully, one of those will be up your street. Everything we will learn in this class will help you with these three projects. If you feel like it, why not pick two projects to complete? Let's talk through each one. Project 1, design a wedding invitation for a friend. If you have a friend getting married, then perfect. You don't have to design a real stationary, although that would be nice. But why not get them to brief you as if you were? Find out about the style of their wedding, any the key colors. Is it a big wedding or a small and intimate wedding? Is it grand or more rustic? Find out as much as you can from them. All these factors will help you decide on typefaces. Alternatively, you could download my brief for made-up couple and use them as your clients. It's useful to work from a brief as when we design, we generally need to know who we're designing for. When it's open-ended, sometimes it means we have less focus. Project 2, design an album cover for your favorite band. This brief is simple, simply pick one of your favorite bands or artist and create them an album cover. You might want to think about other elements like photography or illustration, that's totally cool, or you could try a completely typographic approach. Think about how that artist would brief you if you were their designer. How would a Taylor Swift album look different from a Coldplay album? How would a Drake album defer to an Adele album? Think about their style of music and their personalities. Do some research on them, even if you think you know all about them already. Get on Pinterest and create a mood board for them, maybe. If you're going to use other elements, think carefully how the typography works with that, and we will discuss this further in the class. Design a typographic pattern. I'm hoping we will have quite few surface pattern designers on this course. I know I have on previous classes, so if you are here, this project is for you guys. I want you to design a mostly typographic pattern. I say mostly as you might have quite defined style using illustration or geometric shapes. I want you to build on that and start incorporating some text elements into your patterns. If you need a little help and focus, I've also written up a brief that you can download in the class resources and use that one if you wish. One of the videos focuses on combining multiple typefaces together which might be relevant for this project, so make sure you do check that video out. Okay, so as we work through these first few video lessons, I just want you to start thinking about your project and what you might do. Don't worry if you haven't totally decided on your project yet either. The first few videos will introduce some typographical terms and typefaces, and hopefully by the third or fourth video, you'll have a good idea of which project to go with. There will be some various project steps to complete along the way, so make sure you do that and upload them into the project gallery. 4. Let's talk type: Throughout this class, there will be some words and terminology that I will be saying quite a lot. I think before we talk about choosing the right typefaces for different jobs, it would be a good idea to just go through some of the more common terms in topography. If you are totally new to type, this might be quite a lot to take in in one go. I'll try and keep it simple. If you already have a fairly good understanding of typography, you probably know a lot of these terms. So serif, A serif font has small strokes at the end of the characters. Serifs are usually associated with more traditional typefaces such as Times and Garamond. But many of the more modern typefaces used serifs, whether bracketed like Georgia or slab serif like Rockwell, or a wedge serif like Birch. Most books, like novels, are written using traditional serif fonts like Garamond or Times. The serifs help form a link between each of the letters, which in turn helps the reader's eye flow across a line or paragraph of type. Throughout this class, we will look at various serif typefaces and when and where to use them. Sans serif. Sans serif is simply a typeface without serifs, sans, meaning without, of course, one of the most famous and while used sans serif typefaces is perhaps Helvetica as seen here on the New York subway. Sans serif typefaces were traditionally seen as headings or subheadings. But nowadays we see a lot of sans serif typefaces used as blocks of copy text in print and especially online, as they are often easier to read small online and serifs, this is due to screen resolution being low and not handling finer details so well. We will talk more about that later on in the class. A few 19 sans serif typefaces along with Helvetica are Century Gothic, which is a geometric typeface, as the letters are based on geometric forms like a perfect circle and Gotham and the typeface synonymous with Barack Obama. Within these two general classifications, we often see many different weights and versions. Let's just take a look at a few of them. Regular or Normal or Roman. This is usually the standard weight that would be used as a base for bold and light versions. Regular weights would generally be used for main body text. Bold might be used for highlighting something within body text or used in headings. I often talk about typography as a voice. So where regular might be your normal talking level, bold would be a little louder. Light might be a whisper. Light, with all these weights the letter shape, is essentially the same, just the stroke width changes. Light might also be referred to as thin. Not all typefaces have all these different versions anyway. Most of them you might probably you find have irregular and bold version. italic and Oblique. People often get confused by the difference between italic and Oblique versions of a typeface. On the left, we can see regular Garamond and italic Garamond. Italics are usually based on the regular versions of the typeface, but elements will be redesigned. As you can see, we have quite a few of the letters here, particularly the f and the g, are clearly different on the regular and italic versions. Italic type was originally used to fit more words onto a page using traditional printing methods. But these days we mostly use italics to emphasize a word, a quote, or a phrase. Oblique typefaces are slanted versions of their original regular typeface. On the right, we can see a regular version of Helvetica and an oblique version. The letter shapes are the same just at an angle. This should help us see the difference between italic on the left and oblique on the right. Condensed and extended typefaces are when the letters have either been squashed or stretched horizontally, but the height is the same. I wouldn't advise you to condense or extend typefaces yourself. Some look great, condensed, others everything goes a little bit wrong. So probably best to leave that to the type designers. In this slide, we can see the e of Helvetica In a condensed version, regular and extended. A couple more terms now, so uppercase. Uppercase letters refer to capitals. In traditional printing methods, movable type would be kept in type cases, withdraws. The capitals were in the upper section, hence the term uppercase. When should we use uppercase apart from at beginning of sentences and when naming someone or something? Usually, we would use uppercase as headings to get people's attention. Think about newspaper headlines or no smoking signs. We tend not to use uppercase in a block of text like this. This is quite hard to read as a block of text and imagine reading a whole book like that. Lowercase obviously refers to the smaller letters and a block of text using boast suddenly becomes a lot easier to read. When it comes to typography, there's obviously a lot of terminology referring to how we use type in certain parts of platforms. In this class, I will try to keep the information relevant to choosing the right typeface. There will be a few more terms we talk about along the way. But if you do want to know more about typography, then take a look at my first ever Skillshare class, The Art of Typography. Hopefully, this quick intro to few terms will help as we talk more about choosing typefaces in the class. In the next video, we will talk about the personality of a typeface, and this is one of my favorite subjects to talk about. So hope you enjoy this next lesson. 5. Personality of a typeface: Personality of a typeface. In some of my previous classes, I've spoken about how choosing different typefaces can completely change the meaning or personality of a word. If we look at the word danger, choosing a very simple bold sans serif typeface gives the word the impact it needs to be easily read and used as a warning. You could also use a stencil typeface to communicate a different sort of danger. I'm thinking minefields or crocodiles in swamps here. Using a thin script like typeface doesn't really communicate the word danger at all, or the word beautiful can be represented in many ways too. A script typeface like porcelain communicates a delicate, elegant, and complicated beautiful. Using a typeface like Quicksand speaks of a much more simple kind of beautiful. There are many typefaces that can work for the same word. The skill is to pick the right typeface for the right occasion, and to make sure your choice helps any message you're trying to convey. Whether that's an informative kind of danger or a more tongue-in-cheek kind of danger, or a grand, elegant beautiful, or a simple and clean kind of beautiful. I'm going to talk about this in much more depth by looking at a few words and a variety of typefaces depicting each word. During this video, I will also say what category some of these typefaces come under. For example, when you search for typefaces, it helps if you know the difference between a slab serif and a blackletter typeface or script from your serifs. Let's start with love. Here's four different typefaces. I've included the name of the typeface underneath as I think it's quite useful. I'll talk more about where to buy and get free typefaces from in a later video. I just want you to think about your first thought when reading the word love in each of these typefaces. I'll just give you a moment to have a little think. Here's the thing, a lot of visual art and how it is perceived can be very subjective. If we look at an abstract painting, we can all have a different emotional response to it. With typography, a lot of the time, you will probably want your work to have a universal message. Let's say you're using type on a film poster, your work will be seen by potentially thousands of people, and you want them all to have a similar response to it. By choosing the right typeface, that suddenly becomes a deal breaker. Let's get back to our love words. We can all have a slightly different emotional response to these typefaces, but universally, our viewing of them is probably quite similar. Top left in the Edwardian Script typeface, it's probably a classic kind of love, quite traditional and elegant. Top right, love has got a bit more fun, modern and show-offy. Bottom left has quite a useful field to it, so maybe young love, teenagers. The calligraphy typeface has quite a genuine and natural feel to it. These typefaces are very popular on wedding stationary, for example. Let's try another word, school. Whereas love is an emotional word, we are programmed to have an emotional response to it. With a word like school, we start thinking on a much more subconscious level. A typeface can communicate different kinds of schools. Top left, to me, this communicates a very conservative school, perhaps a private school steeped in history and reputation, or a business school, it's professional, but maybe not much fun. Top right, which is DIN, which is a sans serif typeface. We might be looking at a much more modern school, but relatively standard in its educational policies. Bottom left is a little bit more elaborate. Maybe this would work well for dance or theater school. Bottom right, looks quite child-like me. Maybe we'd associate this with a kindergarten or a preschool. I doubt any parents paying to send their children to private school would be attracted to one with a handwritten typeface like that. Hopefully, by looking at these typefaces together, you can start to see how one word can take on very different meanings just by your choice of typeface. Sometimes if the text element is supporting a logo or other visual element, a more simple typeface might be required so it doesn't take away the attention from something else. We will talk more about that in a later video. One more word, music. This is quite a fun word to use as an example. Let's say you are designing an album cover and you'll want your choice of typeface to reflect to the musical style of your artist. I won't tell you my thoughts on these as I reckon we all might be thinking along similar line here, but some of you now might be starting to think, "Well, yes. I want my choice of typeface to reflect my message, but I also want it to challenge people." Why can't you use the bottom right blackletter typeface for a classical music album, and why can't you use the top left script for a heavy metal band? Lets break with convention, let's break the rules a little and have some fun. Absolutely no one is saying that you can't do that, as long as that's what your particular job or client wants you to do as a designer. If a client comes to you wanting an elegant, classy wedding invitation designed, and you present them with some way out typefaces just because you want to break the rules, then you aren't answering your client brief. I'm not saying you must always use an appropriate typeface, but you need to know when you can push it, when you push the boat out and you can do something a little bit crazy. Here's a "Congratulations on your wedding" print I designed, and this couple got married in Las Vegas in a drive-thru wedding ceremony. This style and mix of fun typefaces blended itself to their style of wedding and the couple's personalities. This might not work so well for a more traditional wedding couple. What I want to get over in this class is how much different typefaces can communicate different messages and feelings. Your challenge is how you then use that in your work or given projects by clients. Before we move on to the next video, I just want to recap some of the type classifications with you, so it's easier for you to find typefaces that you might want. Aside from sans serif and serif, we can have more specific descriptions for type. Display or decorative, usually used for big headings and to grab attention, probably on posters. You wouldn't write paragraphs in this, but it's great for grabbing people's attention. In each of these slides, you will see examples of these typefaces and their names. Hopefully this will help you get familiar with a few typefaces, and maybe make some notes on ones that you are particularly attracted to. Hand drawn, anything with a hand drawn look and feel. You can also easily create your own handwriting typeface with some various online tools. A really easy one is myscriptfont.com, so check that out and give it a go yourself. Script typefaces flow from one letter to the next and hint at an old style of writing, although they are often designed mathematically and with great precision. Calligraphy typefaces are becoming really popular lately based on calligraphics of handwriting. There are loads of great examples of this style about at the moment. Slab serif, I briefly mentioned this in the previous video. These are typefaces with big slab like serif as opposed to more delicate serif on a traditional typeface like Times. Rockwell is probably one of the most well known slab serif typefaces. Stencil typefaces are so-called as the alphabet could be laid on a flat plastic sheet with cut throughs for people to draw around, so stencil typefaces replicate that old style of a letter drawing. A lot of them these days have an added texture too, like the Capture it typeface here. If you require an old school typewriter style of typeface, just search for that under the term typewriter, and there's lots and lots of great examples of that out in a moment. Comic book typefaces resemble the typefaces used in comics like a hand drawn marker pen. Blackletter is also called Gothic script or Old English. It was used a lot from the 12th century until the 17th, and we do still see it today. Think rock groups or German beer. Now there are other genres like symbols, and thickbox, and grunge, and retro, but hopefully this brief intro helps you with your searches. Now I want you to start one of your projects steps at this point. Hopefully by now, you are starting to think of a few ideas in your head of where you'd like to go with your projects. I want you to start collecting some inspiration. Look online in magazines, and most importantly, look at typography all around you on a usual day. Try to notice type and what typefaces have been used. Look at signs, book covers, food packaging, newspapers, everything you usually just subconsciously take in. I want you to start really thinking about the type that's used. What typefaces are used on a house and home magazine as opposed to a celebrity gossip magazine? What typefaces are used for toiletries aimed at men opposed to those aimed at women? What are these typefaces communicating to you? Share three images with us in your project. These can be just taken with your phones or scanned in, and they don't have to be great photos. Share your thoughts, good or bad, about the typography that's used. The point of this exercise is to start getting you thinking about typefaces as a way of communicating a message or a feeling which will be vital in your projects. Now let's move on to the next video which is all about using type within logo design. 6. Using type in logo design: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about using type within branding and logo design. There's a fine art to designing logos and I have another class on here too for it is a subject. So please do check that out if you're interested in logo design. So I will keep this video specific to using type within your logos. I know that logo design isn't specifically one of the projects options in this class, but quite often you can find yourself designing a logo for a wedding couple or a band, so the same principles will apply. Firstly, sometimes you might have designed a logo symbol, that will almost certainly need text as well. Here's a logo I designed for a visual effects company, Coffee and TV. I designed the symbol as a hint of a on button, but also looking down on a cup of coffee. So the trick here was to use a typeface that didn't try to compete or take away from the logo symbol. So I've used a very clean, simple typeface called Museo. In this scenario, choosing the right typeface is about choosing something that complements the other logo element. This might be something you need to consider in a variety of jobs or projects too. So not all typography needs to be showing off or saying, "Look at me." Sometimes your text just needs to support another visual element, whether that's a logo or a photograph, or an illustration or design. I would say typography is always important, but it's not always the star of the show. So whenever you start a project or design, try to work out in your head what the main focus point will be. This might be something you will need to consider if you're designing an album cover and there are other strong visual elements to work with. Let's look at another way you can use type within a logo. Using type or letter shapes to make up the logo symbol itself can be a fun and clever way to use type. In this logo, I designed for hair salon called Scarlet Knight. I combined the S from Scarlet and K from Knight to form a logo that represented some hairdressing scissors. Now, in this particular instance, I designed this from scratch, I didn't use an existing typeface. If you plan to use an existing typeface bought or free, and you plan to start playing around with the letter shapes and adjusting their shapes, you should really read the license agreement when you download the typeface. Some will specifically say you cannot adjust the letter shapes. So you might need to think about designing your own at some point. Working with initials can often be applied to wedding stationery design, maybe using the first initials of the couple. So maybe this is a route you could consider creating a little logo for the happy couple. The other way to use type in logo design is to make the type the main focus point, the main element, and not be in the form of a logo type. The most famous is probably Coca-Cola. The original logo type was based on Frank M. Robinson's handwriting. He was an accountant at a time for Coca-Cola. Now, over the decades, this has developed into what we all recognize today. So the script type is the star of the show in this case. If you are planning on designing a logo that is just type, be aware that if you use a typeface you can buy or get for free, this is public domain, anyone else can buy it and use it for a logo or anything else they wish. So if you really want something unique for a brand, that can only be associated with that particular company, then you will need to think about designing with the bespoke typeface or getting a type designer involved to help you. Another factor to take into consideration with branding is a secondary typeface. So let's say you've designed a logo for a person, or a company or a brand, and they also want a version with a strap line or maybe a web address underneath. If I use the same typeface I used in my logo symbol here, it would just be way too much as it's quite an elaborate typeface. So I opt for a simpler typeface in a regular way. We will talk more about type hierarchy in a later video, but this is one of those instances where you need to have it clear in your head, what's the main focus point? Instantly, this simple sans-serif typeface I used is Century Gothic, and I use this throughout my brand, wherever I can to help with brand consistency. Project step number two. If you've chosen to design a wedding invite or an album cover for your project, just start sketching some potential logo ideas down. You might not use them in your final design, but it's a firm way to use this exercise and to see what you might come up with. Now, when it comes to logos and strap lines, you would probably use a maximum of two typefaces, but what about all those projects that might require using many different typefaces? In the next video, we will look at how to combine multiple typefaces, without everything looking messy. 7. Combining multiple typefaces: I often get asked, how many typefaces can you use in one go? It's an interesting question. I'm not really one with a defined, easy answer. In logo design, I say two maximum, a main one and perhaps another or different way if there's a strap line for example, as we discussed in the previous video. In a party invite, a lot depends on the style you're going for. Let's take a look at a wedding invite design. Here I've used a calligraphic typefaces, main star, with a simple sans-serif for the sporting type. If I'd used the calligraphy type for the whole of the wedding invite, you'd get something looking like this, which is pretty hard to read, I think you do agree. But then, if I did use the sans-serif typeface for the bride and groom names, they don't have the same impact as the calligraphy type. It's about balance and relationship between type and working out which type needs to be decorative, and which type needs to be read easily at small size. If you've chosen to design a wedding invitation for this project, make sure the invitation design and typefaces reflect the style of the wedding with the couple that you have in mind. Here is a typographic surface pattern designed for new baby boy. This uses five different typefaces. The trick here is to find five different enough typefaces but also ones that compliment each other. Using five different typefaces in a design can easily start to look messy and a bit hodgepodge, so I wouldn't freely advise to go ahead and use five typefaces in your designs, but I would like to talk you through a few pointers for choosing typefaces that compliment each other, if you do. I'm going to talk you through my process using a poster I've designed for some playroom rules. Now, a lot of time, choosing multiple typefaces that just seem to fit together as trial and error. Well, one script typeface can work with others another won't. Although they might not be hard and fast rules, they're awesome tips I can talk you through. I'm going to keep the original post on the left-hand side, the one that works, and on the right-hand side, I'll talk you through a few options that just don't work so well. The original script typeface I used was marketing script. It's quite a thick, stroke weight and seems to balance well against the other typefaces. If I'd used a more fancy, delicate script typeface, it stands out a bit too much jars against the others. I've also changed the simple sans-serif typeface here from din condensed to a more child-like typeface. This is where it all gets complicated because you might think for design of this nature, using lots of childlike typefaces, and hand-drawn ones, et cetera, would be best as it's a print for children. But there's a lot of factors to consider with this. One is readability, you want them to be easily read. Some of the more childlike typefaces are often quite difficult to read, and the one I've substituted here doesn't work very well. It's small, it's difficult to read for the, "Let your imagination run wild" rule. When I start adding even more random typefaces, we can see how quickly something can start to look messy. On the original design, I used a great typeface called Rosewood for the standout display typeface. The one used for the words Play and Sing. It's decorative but if you look at the outline shape, it remains a very structured typeface which works well with the others. When I change that to a handwriting typeface called Elliot Six, it doesn't have the same impact and starts looking very messy. Rosewood nicely fits in the box structure of this design. I also changed the Slab serif typeface used for Laugh A Lot and Fancy Dress to a comic book inspired typeface called Adventure. Again, another typeface that would appeal to children. But when they all come together, they start to clash and fight for attention. Finally, I changed the simple sans-serif typeface called Avenir, for the longer rules like Don't Forget Tidy Up Time to another handwriting typeface called Bradley's hand. Now we have a completely different looking poster on the right using typefaces that on paper, more appealing to children, but together they don't work so well. Let's take a closer look at these by just looking at them alongside each other. On the left are the original group of typefaces and on the right are the new ones. The ones on the left share similar qualities which help them complement each other. Apart from Avenir, the one used for say Please and Thank You, they all have quite strong stroke width and look pretty solid. The mix of sans-serif with the thick script and the slab serif work well. While'st Rosewood, used for Smile be the main star, I could probably afford to include another display typeface in this mix. But as a group, these worked well together. On the right, we have a group of typefaces that don't share many qualities. They are all a bit disconnected from each other. Even though at least four of them are childlike, they simply don't work well together. I'm just going to swap the two script typefaces over now so we can see the more delicate script in the group on the left. Well, she doesn't look bad. It doesn't look so well because it's too delicate compared to the others in the group. The stroke width is thin and it's a lot faccia. Let's do the same with the typefaces used for Smile. When we bring the handwriting one into the group on the left, it sticks out for the wrong reasons. It's not structured as the others and it looks bit messy. Just going back to the original poster design, I want you to think about what makes this appealing for children, and there's a couple of illustrations in the design. The color plays a massive factor in being attractive to kids. The typefaces can afford to be simple and readable, they don't all have to look child-like as opposed to on the right demonstrate. These are all the quite child like typefaces but together they're just not working so well. Now I realize this is a lot to take in, but don't worry if you don't get it straight away, practice makes perfect. I still look back on some old work and think, what was I thinking? The more you practice topography and playing around with typefaces, the easier this will become. Your eye will start to see what works and what doesn't. Going back to our personal invite typeface lesson, all of those points are important. But when mixing multiple typefaces together, pick typefaces that compliment each other. Maybe pick out 1-2 stand-out type faces, the others can support it and afford to be very simple in their shapes and structure. Think about the weights of the typefaces, think about how they will work within the structure of your design. Now, project step 3, I want you to start narrowing down your choices for typefaces you'd like to use in your projects. Experiment with a few to see what works well together, what are they all communicating. Ask your fellow students in the project space as well. I will also be checking in regularly to help guide you where I can. Remember to give us a background into who and what you are designing for so we can give feedback. If you literally only have your system fonts installed on your computers, then watch the next video for tips on where to buy and get free typefaces. Remember, there's nothing saying you have to use an existing typeface for your project, if you'd like to create one yourselves or do some hand drawing or calligraphy, absolutely do that as well. 8. Buying typefaces: Where to buy typefaces? You are probably aware that there are lots of typefaces available for free these days. I have loads of free typefaces and many of them are actually really, really good. I would definitely recommend the site FontSquirrel.com for lot of good-quality free typefaces. There are other sites like DaFont or 1001 Free Fonts. These are slightly less regulated, so you might have a few issues with kerning. That's the space between the letters, and some of the quality of the typefaces are just not so good. There are also a lot of typefaces on some sites that are copy cats of ones that you'd normally buy. I'd really encourage you to try and avoid those. Think about the original type designer who spent hours crafting a typeface and then not getting paid for it. Not fair, right? For any free typefaces you do download, please do read the license agreement. Some are just for personal use and not to be used commercially. Worth of read so don't get into trouble when someone sees their typeface on a massive billboard. Sites you can buy typeface's from like MyFonts.com, or HypeForType.com, and Veer just to name a few. Something I've been doing a lot of in the last year is buying font bundles from sites like Creative Market and Design Cuts. For about $30, you can easily find yourself with maybe 15 high-quality typefaces. Often they package them in different genres like calligraphic, and hand-drawn, or display fonts. Embarrassingly, I've bought loads I've never actually used. It can become a little bit addictive. In the class announcements, I will post a discussion with all these links. There are loads of sites out there, I've named literally just a few. Please use that thread to add any other websites you really recommend for buying or get free fonts as well. 9. Type hierarchy: Type hierarchy. I want to discuss type hierarchy with you all. All be it briefly as it's quite a huge subject in itself. Determining what hierarchy and form your text copy needs to take will help the person reading it find the most important parts to read. Or whether an article will interest them or maybe finding out dates relevant to you. The best piece of advice I can really give is to just start looking at as many examples of topography as you can, and seeing how the type works together. For menus, to labels, to packaging, to film posters. Once you start really taking all this information in, rather than what we normally do and just take it in subconsciously. You'll soon get an appreciation for what text is most important to read and what can be the next to read, and then comes all the small print. When we talk about hierarchy, we usually talk about three levels. The first being prime level, this is the headlines, the biggest piece of type, this is a text that will make you want to read more or take a closer look. Newspaper front pages are a prime example on how to grab our attention with a big headline. Maybe big words to save the date on a pre-wedding invite. On the secondary level, there will be the strap line, subheadings, quotes, captions. These are usually still quite easy to read, so we might scan a magazine article and see if reading that whole article will be what we expect by just reading those secondary levels of type. The third level is the body copy, the main text, the main article in a magazine, or the smaller type on your cereal packaging, for example. All the other information you need on a wedding invite, the instructions for a recipe. Within this level, there might also be some keywords. You can highlight them in bold or [inaudible] , changing the color, but usually only to highlight a few keywords within a big block of text. Even within a book like a travel rough guide where it's packed with information and we don't have the luxury of white space, we can see how the text can be broken up to make it a little bit more digestible for the reader. You don't have to determine hierarchy completely by size or type. Maybe on a business card you want a really classy simple design, but you want some difference between your name and other details. Again, that's where you can break things up by different white color or positioner in a more stand-alone area. There are many examples of how type hierarchy can work differently for a number of jobs. I've made this Pinterest board of album covers, and already we can see how many different ways type is used and what your eye is immediately drawn to, or in magazine layout design. The many ways a contents page can be arranged, or how much information a front cover holds. Wedding invites, sometimes the primary type is the couples name, other times it save the date or the word wedding or marriage. Sometimes the date is the big thing. So [inaudible] no defined set rules as such. Your main job as a designer is to communicate a message, and usually that means making it easy for the viewer to find the information they want in an easy and visually appealing way. I've got a board on Pinterest called tremendous topography, if you'd like some more inspiration by the way. If your chosen project is the patent design one, you might find that the text doesn't have much hierarchy and it all just works on one level, and working with a pattern rather than certain focus points. As I've said, type hierarchy is a big subject, but hopefully this little introduction will help you get thinking about it for your projects. Step four of your project, I want you to start looking at other examples of how type is used on various items and make notes about the hierarchy. And then thinking about everything we've spoken about so far, start to finalize your designs or maybe you have a few options, you'd like people's opinions on. Post them in the project gallery. Why not try another one of the projects? The more you work with type, the more confident you'll become. Practice makes perfect, I promise you. As I've said before, I do look back on some of my old projects and wince a little bit and think that was awful, but I've just kept at it. And you get to a stage where know a bit more about what you're doing. In the next video, we will talk a little bit about body text. 10. Body copy: You probably won't be too concerned with body text in your chosen project. But I wanted to talk about it as choosing typefaces for body copy or your main text in say a magazine or website article can be a confusing subject. Firstly, it's very important for people to be able to read this text easily. Let's just look at this block of text in a tight fiscal Stringfellows compared to a serif typeface like times or simple sans-serif like Verdana. For any text of length, you want an easy to read typeface with easy letter forms. This helps our eyes flow from one word to the next without it having to try too hard. Equally, a massive block of text in bold Verdana compared to the regular way makes it harder to read. A lack of white space is hard on our eyes. When talking about white space, the leading, that's the space between the lines is also important to get right. Too little, our eyes start to skip lines and all the letters and words start get a bit jumbled up. To much reading is broken up and doesn't flow. Then comes the debate of whether serif or sans-serif is better for body copy. Pick up a few bits of literature around you, maybe a magazine, a book, a newspaper, a leaflet, and a catalog of some sort. Look at the typeface that's used for the main text within each of them. I can almost bet you that there will be a spread of serif and sans-serif typefaces used. There was a debate that sans-serif typefaces didn't work so well on screen and on websites due to screen resolution being so much lower than print resolution. But these days with much better screens like Retina displays and 4K TVs, we can get away with it a lot more. Even before then there were some sans-serif typefaces that didn't work all that well on screen anyway. Steve Jobs actually commissioned type designers to design typefaces, especially for use on the first Macs, taking into consideration the limitations at the time. These days, a safe place to find typefaces that worked well on screen is Google Fonts. There is a mixture of serif and sans-serif. What should you choose? This depends mostly on your project and what mood and message you would like to convey. Sometimes you might use both the different elements of the design. In rough guide here, your choice will be determined by the rest of your design as well. Sometimes designers just find themselves naturally drawn to certain typefaces. You'll probably find you end up with a favorite one or two. If you're working on a magazine layout, it's important to get a style in place also. You don't want the magazine full of 100 different typefaces. You'll want some consistency for other publication. That's not say you can't have fun with it, but a key style is important, just as it is for any brand. If you'd like more information on these last two videos, I will post up some useful links in the discussion section of the class. This is just touching on some of the many aspects of good typography. If you would like to know more then, please do check out my other class also, and there's lots of other good classes on Skillshare. There's some really good ones on InDesign about style guides and things like that. 11. Final thoughts: Just want to do a little roundup of a few key points we've spoken about. As I know, it's a lot to take in. When reviewing your projects let us know mainly, what message you want to convey? Now there's a good quote by Stacey Kole on open-fonts.com, it says, "The best font choices are ones where readers do not notice the font, but the message." I think that's good to have in the back of your mind. Of course, I think there are exceptions to this. As often, I will look at something and think what an amazing typeface? But that's probably because I'm quite into typography. Does your typeface choice or choices support your message? Again, this might be quite subtle. The typefaces you've used might be very simple and they just seem to work with the rest of the design elements, or maybe your design is more sherry and you picked a real standout typeface to communicate your message. This can work both ways. Just want to show you this cute little illustration. The main design element of this is the illustration, but the typeface here can completely change the feel for it, from something a bit businesslike to something more casual to something more sporty. Does the hierarchy work as intended? In your designs, are we reading all the elements we need to with the right emphasis on certain words or details? Also, let us know if you're drawn to certain typefaces over others. I know that I definitely have my favorite typefaces. I hope you found this class useful and insightful. As many of you probably know who've taken my previous classes, I've tried to feedback on everyone's projects when I can. So please do use this opportunity to use to project gallery and post up your work. Also, give fellow students feedback and advice. I have got some other classes on Skillshare, the one of typography, I've got savvies on branding your great business and also one about creativity. If you haven't joined this class, please do check them out. I hopefully see you there too. Thanks for joining us.