Fonting Around

As much as I like to think I pay attention to design, color, and layouts, fonts never really caught my interest.  I knew I preferred simple, elegant fonts to heavy, elaborate fonts.  However, I never really paid attention to the power a font can hold to convey meaning.  The activity in Design Basics Index (Krauss, 2004) open my eyes (so to speak) about the messages that can be conveyed through the use of a particular font.  What is interesting to me is how that meaning came to be.  In some instances meaning has been attached to a certain font because of its frequent use in particular situations.  For example, you'll notice below that the word "Marines" is in the Stencil font.  I have seen this font used often in the context of the armed forces and on all of my father's gear from his participation in the Marines.  Other fonts seem to draw meaning from their very shape.  I used a font called Cracked which displays its glyphs as crumbling to the ground.

I found this activity to be easier than I expected going into it.  As I looked through the list of fonts on my computer, many of them did not seem to inspire any words that would be amplified through the font.  Yet, once the I was able to come up with the first word it became easy to imagine situations where many of the fonts might be used.  Developing words that contrasted the font was an interesting exercise because you could imagine how the font could be used to create humor.  It also proves the importance of using a font that aligns to your message.  Enjoy the images below!

Krause, J. (2004). Design Basics Index: A Graphic Designer’s Guide to Designing Effective Compositions, Selecting Dynamic Components & Developing Creative Concep. HOW Design Books: Cincinnati, OH.