helvetica
typographic zine project
lucy schramm 11240202
project outline
For this assessment I chose to base my zine around the iconic Swiss typeface Helvetica. After watching the Gary Hustwit documentary as a source of inspiration for assessment one, I was interested in further exploring Helvetica's origins and impact. I think the typeface's letterforms lend themselves to a range of compositional contexts, from sleek and minimal to bold and experimental. The aim of my zine is to experiment with a range of typographical and compositional techniques to communicate the impact of Helvetica as an icon in the world of typography.
research
style research & inspiration
I started my stylistic research by looking through examples of zines on Behance and Pinterest, a few of which are shown above. I found that I was a fan of oversized type and illustrative elements that extend across a double page spread since it creates a strong visual impact and breaks up the content of the zine a bit. Since one of the constraints of this project is to only use two colours as well as the page colour, I gravitated towards zines with similarly minimal colour schemes to see how they created impactful designs within a small colour palette. I think the use of a contrasting colour scheme results in more impactful compositions, as opposed to analogous or monochromatic colour combinations.
Frankie magazine was a huge source of inspiration for my page layouts and compositions. I love how they make use of negative space to create breathing room in their designs. It gives the magazine an airy and artistic feel without sacrificing visual interest and decorative touches. I closely examined the grid structure of the pages to see how they achieved a successful composition and employed some of these techniques in my own zine.
design process
After my theoretical and aesthetic research, I started experimenting and making layouts in InDesign. I used wide margins (18mm top, 15mm outer, 10mm inner, 30mm bottom) and a structure of 6 columns to guide the placement of elements. The flexibility of InDesign allowed me to easily duplicate spreads and iterate on colours and compositions.
front & back covers
front/back cover design iterations
Each of these cover iterations were variations on a theme, using the range of font weights to create a gradient-like effect when 'neue haas grotesk' is repeated in a cascade from fine to heavy strokes. After experimenting with composition and colour schemes, I eventually decided on the version in the bottom-right corner. Something about the covers with a white background felt a little unfinished to me, and the chosen version had the best balance of colours in my opinion without sacrificing the legibility of the title too much.
contents & feature article
feature article composition before and after tweaks to the grid
For this first section, I wanted to go for a fairly straightforward article layout so that the first page of the feature would sit nicely next to the contents page without too much visual clutter. I originally arranged the body copy into three columns to compliment the same structure I had in the contents page, but this resulted in awkward line lengths and too much needless jumping of the eye across the page. I changed the article into two columns per page, but kept the three columns for the contents since the line lengths were shorter and this fit better with the narrower column width.
As for the written content, I wrote this article after all the other sections to be sure that I covered topics and aspects of the typeface that weren't covered in the designer profiles or type trends.
for your (typographic) information
fy(t)i double page spread experimentation & iterations
I was really excited for this section and had a lot of ideas for what I wanted to say with it, but I struggled to decide on the most effective way to communicate my message.
In this section, I wanted to explore the relationship between Arial and Helvetica, since I knew that the former was basically born to be a Helvetica clone, but now is perhaps even more accessible due to licensing and royalty issues making it a system default font on most computers.
Not only is this a pretty clear example of typographical plagiarism, but Arial is also just pretty clearly inferior to Helvetica in a lot of ways that become more evident the more you look for them. The clearest visual giveaway is that while Helvetica's strokes terminate at perfect 90° angles, Arial's strokes cut off at a range of jaunty angles that create a sense of casual clumsiness in comparison to Helvetica. This unevenness is only compounded by the typeface's loose tracking, especially when compared to the total efficiency of space that exists within and around Helvetica's characters. I kept thinking back to a quote from Mike Parker in the Helvetica documentary, describing the letterforms of die Neue Haas Grotesk:
"It is not a letter that's bent to shape, it's a letter that lives in a powerful matrix of surrounding space."
To me, Arial feels bent to shape, and it lives in no such matrix.
That is essentially what I wanted to do with this section - communicate the (perhaps subjective) superiority of Helvetica over Arial by directly comparing the differences in their form, no matter how subtle they may seem at first glance.
To communicate this, I wanted to pit the two typefaces against each other somehow, and this is what led me to the title of 'sans wars'. The title is kind of tongue-in-cheek, since it is objectively slightly ridiculous to describe the relationship between two inanimate typefaces as a 'war'.
I originally wanted to compare the lowercase 'a' of both typefaces somehow, and experimented with placing them side by side in varying formations, sometimes with tangent lines to show the evenness and perpendicularity of Helvetica's stroke terminals in comparison to Arial's. The idea would be that since both forms are quite similar to each other, the audience's eye would be drawn more quickly to the differences, and the written article would explain what these differences are and why they came about. However, none of them really struck the right chord and I felt like I could more effectively communicate the emotive message of the section by showing rather than telling.
In this section, I wanted to explore the relationship between Arial and Helvetica, since I knew that the former was basically born to be a Helvetica clone, but now is perhaps even more accessible due to licensing and royalty issues making it a system default font on most computers.
Not only is this a pretty clear example of typographical plagiarism, but Arial is also just pretty clearly inferior to Helvetica in a lot of ways that become more evident the more you look for them. The clearest visual giveaway is that while Helvetica's strokes terminate at perfect 90° angles, Arial's strokes cut off at a range of jaunty angles that create a sense of casual clumsiness in comparison to Helvetica. This unevenness is only compounded by the typeface's loose tracking, especially when compared to the total efficiency of space that exists within and around Helvetica's characters. I kept thinking back to a quote from Mike Parker in the Helvetica documentary, describing the letterforms of die Neue Haas Grotesk:
"It is not a letter that's bent to shape, it's a letter that lives in a powerful matrix of surrounding space."
To me, Arial feels bent to shape, and it lives in no such matrix.
That is essentially what I wanted to do with this section - communicate the (perhaps subjective) superiority of Helvetica over Arial by directly comparing the differences in their form, no matter how subtle they may seem at first glance.
To communicate this, I wanted to pit the two typefaces against each other somehow, and this is what led me to the title of 'sans wars'. The title is kind of tongue-in-cheek, since it is objectively slightly ridiculous to describe the relationship between two inanimate typefaces as a 'war'.
I originally wanted to compare the lowercase 'a' of both typefaces somehow, and experimented with placing them side by side in varying formations, sometimes with tangent lines to show the evenness and perpendicularity of Helvetica's stroke terminals in comparison to Arial's. The idea would be that since both forms are quite similar to each other, the audience's eye would be drawn more quickly to the differences, and the written article would explain what these differences are and why they came about. However, none of them really struck the right chord and I felt like I could more effectively communicate the emotive message of the section by showing rather than telling.
What I eventually settled on was creating an image in Illustrator, overlaying the Arial alphabet directly over Helvetica's and using the subtractive pathfinder tool to visually show the differences between the faces. This ended up creating a really cool effect when set on an orange background - the blue Helvetica fragments and the white Arial fragments act as shadows and highlights, giving an almost 3D-like effect to the letters. The words 'no, why' highlighted in the alphabet, set in lowercase, add to the tongue-in-cheek tone.
Although I didn't end up including a written article in this section, I used my knowledge and personal feelings about the two typefaces to inform my image creation, and I think this ended up creating a stronger visual impact that also communicates my intended message. It acts as a comment on the relationship between two faces, but also as a diagram that illustrates the differences between them that is visually memorable to audiences.
Although I didn't end up including a written article in this section, I used my knowledge and personal feelings about the two typefaces to inform my image creation, and I think this ended up creating a stronger visual impact that also communicates my intended message. It acts as a comment on the relationship between two faces, but also as a diagram that illustrates the differences between them that is visually memorable to audiences.
designer profiles
designer profile layout experimentation & iterations
For the profiles of Miedinger and Hoffman, I was originally going to use two matching layouts with large portraits of the designers opposite their respective articles. However, this wasn't particularly visually interesting and didn't make good use of typographic elements to create an interesting composition. I experimented with oversized type and highlighting the interesting interactions that came about from them. I de-emphasised the portraits of the designers in favour of more unique compositions that highlighted the typeface. From here, I played around with different colour combinations and placement of body copy until I settled on my final choices (the last two spreads shown above).
type trends
The 'type trends' page is another example of a more straightforward article layout, similar to what I designed for the feature article. The topic of this article revolves around the ubiquity of Helvetica and how it is a pretty inescapable presence. To communicate this, I decided to create an illustration made entirely out of logos that use Helvetica in some form or another. I ended up using 19 logos in total, which is only a limited selection of all the brands that use Helvetica. This sample also doesn't even touch on all the other instances where it is used that we interact with on a daily basis.
This illustration is a bit more chaotic than some of the others from the zine, but I was still very precise in how each component interacted with each other. I aligned each logo to the edges of the page margin, but I allowed some descenders (as in 'Jeep' and 'Wedding&GiftRegistry') and curved edges (as in the very bottom of 'AmericanAirlines') to poke out in places. This maintained the order of the grid without feeling the image feeling too cramped or forced into place. I then duplicated the image, changed the colour to orange, flipped it 180° and aligned it at the appropriate spots to create another layer of depth that added to the slightly chaotic feel of the image.
final zine mockups
reflection (taken from the final article of the zine)
This zine design project has been both challenging and rewarding, and I really enjoyed the design process and experimenting with type in ways I hadn’t explored before.
Prior to this assignment, I had very limited experience in creating typographic layouts, but
I was extremely interested in the topic and enjoyed looking at examples of effective ‘macro-typography’. I was heavily inspired by creative magazine compositions, in particular the layouts used in Frankie magazine. Their use of negative space creates a light and airy feel to the magazine that I feel really matches the tone of their content, and their compositions heavily influenced my own. I usually shy away from having large swathes of empty space in my work because I’m afraid of it looking sparse, but I think for this project the empty space and comfortable margins were integral to the success of my compositions.
I was extremely interested in the topic and enjoyed looking at examples of effective ‘macro-typography’. I was heavily inspired by creative magazine compositions, in particular the layouts used in Frankie magazine. Their use of negative space creates a light and airy feel to the magazine that I feel really matches the tone of their content, and their compositions heavily influenced my own. I usually shy away from having large swathes of empty space in my work because I’m afraid of it looking sparse, but I think for this project the empty space and comfortable margins were integral to the success of my compositions.
I found it an interesting challenge to not only create a well structured grid, but know when to break it and break it in a way that results in a satisfying composition. For example, the body copy in the Max Miedinger profile page doesn’t sit flush to the bottom left corner like the paragraphs of the feature article, instead it sits in the centre of the page beneath the first arch of the oversized ‘m’. Although this is a slight break in the grid, I maintained a consistent feel by using the same textbox width as in all the other articles. When aligning large text as illustration, I was sure to align elements by their x-heights, baselines, or perpendicular edges as opposed to the edges of curved letters or extraneous descenders. This was particularly important for illustrations like the image used on the ‘Type Trends’ page, where despite there being some strokes and edges that extend into the margins, the illustration as a whole feels cohesive and contained within the grid. I used a combination of more straightforward article page layouts (e.g. Feature Article, Type Trends) as well as double page spreads with oversized type that sits across the centre of the page (e.g. FY(T)I, designer profiles). I enjoyed experimenting with these two distinct composition styles to create visual interest within individual pages and across the zine.
I chose Helvetica as the focus of my zine because it is such a timeless typeface that so much can be done with. I was already interested in Helvetica after watching the Gary Hustwit documentary as a source of inspiration for my own typeface design in assessment one, but throughout this project I fell in love with it even more. I really do believe that its neutrality and versatility make it a great vessel for interesting graphic experimentation. I thoroughly enjoyed playing with scale and utilising different font weights to create visual hierarchy and interesting compositions.
Overall, I am very happy with the final result of the zine and hope to continue refining my typographic design skills in future design projects.
