Exercise Overview
Typography is everywhere! To put the spotlight on some of the typography in the environment built around us, this project involved collecting vernacular typography straight from our surroundings. The goal of this exercise was to build exposure to vernacular types. Doing so helps to increase familiarity with typography, typographic forms, anatomy, and type classifications. By paying close attention to various typographic details, characteristics, and qualities, recognizing typefaces and noticing patterns in typographic usage can become second nature.
VERNACULAR TYPE COLLECTION
The first part of the exercise involved taking pictures of vernacular typography. From different typefaces and typestyles to different type weights, structures, and forms, the aim was to capture a wide variety of types and lettering to form an alphabet of vernacular type. Taking as many pictures as possible, this step resulted in over 100 images of diverse typography; no picture captured the same type. Despite ending up with a plethora of pictures, the following images were selected for the next part of the exercise.
Typography from store signage, clothing, product packaging, and more!
These typefaces were chosen for their unique qualities, characteristics, and the diversity they added to the collection of vernacular types. For instance, you can find sans serif, serif, blackletter, decorative, and script typefaces of different styles and weights all within this set of images.
After selecting the images to move forward with, the images were then cropped and edited in Adobe Photoshop to isolate the individual letters. In Photoshop, distractions in the background were removed with the clone stamp tool, and adjustment layers were applied to make the image black and white and increase its contrast.
Completed vernacular type collection.
VERNACULAR TYPE CLASSIFICATION
Once the letters were isolated and in black and white, letter pairs were created to demonstrate contrasts of size, weight, structure, and form. S and lowercase u demonstrate a contrast in size, M and W were paired for their contrast in weights, E and L showcase a striking contrast in structure, and uppercase A and lowercase a display strong contrast in structure.
Letter pairings that demonstrate contrasts in size, weight, structure, and form.
VERNACULAR TYPE CURATION
To further exercise the principles of typography and design, the collection of types was incorporated into a booklet titled, "Contrasts of Vernacular Type." With Adobe InDesign, an underlying grid structure was utilized for formatting spread layouts and organizing content. Each page discusses a specific contrast of typography: size, weight, structure, and form. The letter pairs formed in the previous step of the exercise were used as visual examples to demonstrate the different contrasts of typography discussed in the booklet. The spread layouts were additionally arranged to intentionally emphasize the written definition of each contrast. For instance, on the page that discusses the contrast of size, the S image was scaled up while the u image was scaled down to further highlight the difference in size. The layout of the page about the contrast of weight was also intentional by placing the hairline sans serif above the text and the bolder and blockier sans serif below. On the next page about the contrast of structure, the images were aligned next to each other to emphasize the letterforms' differences in structure. The E is of a stencil typeface which has a more sturdy and stagnant structure. Whereas, the L is in a decorative script font that has a fluid and organic structure. Finally, the last page showcases a contrast of form by accentuating the contrasts between the curves of the two-story lowercase a and the sharp apex of the uppercase A.
An underlying grid in use to layout content in an organized and intentional manner.
Final "Contrasts of Vernacular Type" Booklet spread.
"Contrasts of Vernacular Type" Booklet Mockup.
The typographic choices for the booklet helped complete the composition of each page. Bodoni 72 Book and Futura PT Light were the selected typefaces for the booklet for their strong contrasts in structure, weight, hierarchy, and form. Additionally, combining blocks of text with images introduced a nice contrast in texture and hierarchy within each page. By applying some of the main contrasts of design and typography, this final booklet not only discusses contrasts in typography but also demonstrates them by showcasing vernacular types.
