Sometimes when you’re in a noisy room, speaking
softly is the best way to get noticed. The same can be
said for a world crowded with images screaming for
attention—many graphic designers find that a type-only
solution is a whispered way to get big results.
TYPE TANDEM
Take, for example, the world of bicycle advertising.
Flip through any bike magazine, and you’ll find one
testosterone-fueled ad after another. When faced
with this rugged terrain, the designers at id29 in
Troy, N.Y., chose a different route for Merlin bicycles.
“The ads were to remind people that Merlin
makes great bikes that are custom-built in small
batches, with every part handled by one team,” says
designer Bryan Kahrs.
The ads began with minimal copy describing
the bike-building craft. “The copy was all very fluid,”
Kahrs explains. “Instead of setting it as a paragraph,
I decided to make it like poetry across the page, and
just play off certain words that made bold statements.”
The result is a series of elegant spreads where
type, type-referenced flourishes and arabesques flow
across a field of white space, connecting words with
the product itself. The ads create an oasis of calm in
a sea of visual noise. “They stand out in magazines,”
Kahrs says, given that “the pages before and after are
usually all red or black with lots of fire effects.”
NO-FRIZZ FONT
Another industry dominated by imagery—albeit
of a predominantly feminine kind—is the world of hair salons. And to get noticed in this crowded field,
Neil Becker of Becker Design in Milwaukee also
went the white space and sophisticated type route.
Services are simply listed in clean, brightly colored
type surrounding the name of the salon, Parlor.
“There are a number of other salons in this publication,”
Becker says, “And I wanted our ad to look
and feel completely different, because I thought this
would set us apart. The logo itself is hand-drawn
type, so the idea of using type made sense to me.
You’re reminding people you’re there, so you have to
come up with fresh, artful, colorful ways to say the
same things over and over again.”
TO THE POINT
When Joel Templin of Hatch Design in San
Francisco set out to create ads for the information
management firm Seagate, he decided to go
against the prevailing winds. “A competitive audit
showed all the other ads were photographic, and all
the noise was at the same level,” Templin explains.
“Cover the logo, and the same ad could have been
for almost any company. So my writing partner
Dann Wilkens and I decided to zig when everyone
else was zagging.” By flooding the pages with a single
color and representing the core concept of each
ad with visually arresting arrangements of letters
and numbers that symbolize the data the company
manages, “the ads totally stood out.”
FOLLOW THE LEADING
Even gifts can use artful treatments of type to
make a singular statement that sets them apart
from the usual shelves crowded with kitsch. “The
purpose of the Après Peau brand is to create souvenirs
from Washington, D.C., that are not just
trinkets,” says Megan Semrick of Willoughby
Design in Kansas City, Mo. In addition to other
products, the design team developed stationery
that features quotes from First Ladies, declarations
of love between Presidents and First Ladies, and
quotes from the Founding Fathers.
All the items are printed letterpress on high
quality card stock. While the team did explore
creating image-based pieces, “We settled on just
using words because it differentiated us more,” says
Semrick. The words make the objects more engaging
than, say, a snow globe. “Our target audience is
people who read, who care about history, and the
quotes give these pieces a layer of meaning beyond
what images alone would.”
TYPE MENU
Of course, there are times when type is not optional.
In these cases, the opportunity becomes how to do more with the type you need. When Richard
Boynton of Wink in Minneapolis was designing
labels for a Target-owned brand of dietary supplements,
his first efforts included many explorations
that featured illustrations. “The bulk of these came
in the form of a large, looming, illustrative logo and
large color fields,” he says. While he did include a
type-only solution in his first-round presentation, “it
was passed over for the other, flashier, more colorful
options because the client thought they would have
a stronger shelf presence.”
However, each round of feedback included
requests for increasing amounts of descriptive copy,
as well as greater focus on FDA-required callouts.
“There was a novel’s worth of information on every
bottle, and each word is important to someone somewhere.”
Eventually, the original type-only solution
was rediscovered. This version references old-school
apothecary type treatments and employs a clear
hierarchy to invite people to read and learn about
what’s in the bottle. “The sheer volume of information
dictated a typographic solution,” Boynton says.
“In fact, it’s the most honest approach available,
given the nature of the product and its constraints.
The illustrative options, in retrospect, were a forced
attempt to create a personality. Eventually, function
and subtlety won out.”
WORD ART
Even in a book or journal, which obviously demand
type, there are ways to design the type treatments to
enhance the reader’s visual experience and comprehension.
Jessica Fleischmann of still room in Los
Angeles explains how she added another layer of
sensual meaning to the articles in the Journal of
Aesthetics and Protest. “It’s a
self-described ‘weirdo think tank’ of art/activism/
theory/criticism,” she says. “I didn’t want images to
overpower the words. I also didn’t want there to be a
one-to-one correlation between text and images.”
Her solution was to read the articles closely and
set type as a visual commentary on what was said.
For the transcript of a performance piece where a
pair of artists read while images were projected on a
wall, Fleishmann created separate texts that run into
and overlap each other, reflecting the real-time experience
of the event, where the voices also overlapped.
For another piece that offers advice about public
speaking as a form of protest, Fleishmann set the
type in layers of speech bubbles to represent instructions
and different weights to reflect discussion. “The
type design was always a response to each particular
piece of writing,” she explains. “In many ways, the
design itself is a text. Its intention is to propose alternate
readings and ways of looking at a cohesive body
of work.”
ABOUT FACE
So now that it’s clear how successful a type-only
design solution can be, the question remains how
to achieve this kind of elegance and sophistication
on the page. San Francisco-based designer and educator
Jennifer Sterling points out the first step is,
paradoxically, to consider type as an image. “I think
typography has the same responsibility as images
and photography,” she says, “which is to convey the
concept of the subject. There’s that old cliché that a
picture is worth a thousand words, but type can do
the same thing, in the right hands. For example, if
you look at Bauhaus or Dadaist expressions, those
weren’t just type; they were movements.”
To increase the communicative value of type,
one must first understand how type works. Templin
points out that in these digital days, many young
designers are losing their feel for type itself. “The
digital thing makes the whole process too easy,” he
laments. “When I was in school, we had a letterform
class where we had to draw type, so you had to figure
out the thicks and thins, and you learned, for
example, that when you made a word in all caps you
had to make it a quarter of a point smaller so that
visually it will look the same size as the rest of the
text.” Templin not only suggests young designers
study the old masters like Paul Rand or Ladislav
Sutnar, but he also has designers in his office scan
and then hand-trace type to get a feel for how the
letterforms are made.
Templin suggests, as do many designers, limiting
the number of typefaces you use. “We only
use a handful of faces—Helvetica, Trade Gothic,
Garamond, Futura—fonts that are very classic,” he
says. “This gives the work some longevity. We don’t
do things that are trendy.” Boynton agrees: “My
advice is to start with classic typography first, because
most contemporary fonts date very quickly. If you
capture the feeling you’re going for with something
that is established and timeless, then your design
will sustain its integrity for years. Which means your
work won’t have to be redesigned by someone else
down the road.”
WALKING A TYPE ROPE
Of course, rules can always be broken in interesting
and effective ways. “I once had a design teacher
who said you should never stack type,” says Becker.
“So my next three projects I did in stacked type.”
However, even he concedes that using typefaces selectively
is a good place to start. The key is creating “the
appropriate sense of space and balance,” he suggests.
For Semrick, the end result of this balancing act
is of direct benefit to the viewer. “You have to think
about pacing,” she says. “If it’s just a field of type,
people won’t read it. You have to take the reader
through the piece, create a hierarchy of message that
leads to understanding. The important consideration
is how to turn the type into a user experience.”
Which, according to Becker, is also one of the key
pleasures of working with type: “Type is so beautiful
because you, as the designer, working with just
typography, can control the viewer’s perspective.”
When it comes down to it, the successful type-only
solution is a result of lots of time-consuming
design trial and error. Kahrs explains how he came
up with the arrangement of elements for the Merlin
bicycle ads: “I started with the Merlin logo on one
side and the image on the other side of the page.
Then I started distorting the type and filling in with
swaths. I set the words conventionally, then spread
them apart, and kept breaking it further and further
apart to see how interesting I could make it visually
without distorting it too much. I was also looking for
things to play with, like pulling out a G or filling in
the Os. The ornament set in Caslon is great; I used it
a lot. I saved iterations every half hour. I did at least
six or seven versions for each ad—a few safe ones, a
few middle ground and a few that went too far.”
Templin went through a similar process in creating
his ads for Seagate. “It took a really long time,”
he recalls. “I’d outline the type, drag it over, scale it
up and down until it proportionally felt right. There
was no cheating. I just kept duplicating things, dragging
them over, filling things in.”
It is this focus on craft that makes working
with type so satisfying for designers. Designers love
images, but sometimes images can become overpowering
or be relied upon to do too much.
The same is true of relying on the masters who
came before you. Yes, as Templin suggests, study the
great type designers of the past. But don’t copy them,
Sterling cautions. Respect history, use a restrained
hand and then be bold enough to make something of
your own.
Giving examples of type treatments that make
her cringe, Sterling recalls some classroom experiences.
“When you’re teaching students and they try
to replicate type solutions,” she says, “they might
take something that was done in the Bauhaus, but
then they translate it using seafoam and mauve. Or
they’re trying to achieve something that was great
when David Carson did it, but it’s not great when
you appropriate what David Carson did.”
