In this week’s lesson, we were taught about typography and its importance when it comes to brand identity.
The use of Typography in design is very important, especially when it comes to branding. It plays a huge part in improving the aesthetic of the design and can influence the viewer's perception while communicating an underlying tone or mood. Typography, in essence, serves as the 'visual voice' of a design, adding character and personality to the message it conveys. As we looked at in last weeks lesson, the tone of voice of your brand is vital, as it’s communication with your customers. As well as this, typography is a significant component of a brand's identity. A consistent typographic style throughout all marketing materials will help form brand recognition and will distinguish it from competitors. A typeface has its own personality and can elicit emotions or reactions. Selecting the right typeface can create and convey a brand's entire ethos. This was interesting to me as while I understood how important typography was, I never considered it’s additional impact within branding and I’m looking forward to seeing how this works this week.
In the photo below, there are examples of how famous fashion brands changed their word marks from serif to sans serif. I personally feel that this example is quite sad to look at as every brand has been stripped of their personality and individualism. It seems as if being trendy is more valuable than creativity. The fashion industry is all about making show stopping statements and avant-garde pieces that will stand the test of time, therefore, I don’t understand why this doesn’t translate into their branding.
I read this article on why Fashion brands are making these choices.
Why do so many brands change their logos and look like everyone else?
Our task of the day was to create a user persona for a random typeface we had to pick out of a hat. This task was to get a feel for the personality of the typeface. I picked out Myriad, I wasn’t familiar with this font so I had to investigate it.
I used Wikipedia as my source:
<aside> 📘 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myriad_(typeface)#:~:text=Myriad is a humanist sans-serif%2C a relatively informal design,true i
</aside>
After reading about Myriad I discovered that it was the typeface that was published by Adobe and it was used in Apple’s branding roughly 20 years ago which surprised me. When I initially looked at the type, I thought it was a bit boring and forgettable. Nothing new or exciting. The designers themselves described the typeface as ‘generic’ which I find quite funny. My first thought was to make my character an average man with no personality. I’m quite pleased with my end result, it’s nothing too exciting, but my intention was to make this very plain to reflect the character and the type.
