OUGD403 Studio brief 01 - Research into Vignellis Typefaces

Helvetica 

Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland. It was a redesign. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.

Helvetica was used in a lot of companies that were varied, showing it was a typeface that has the characteristics of being easily read and clear which also meant that it could easily be manipulated to fit for the specific company for different purposes. It is quite a modern looking typeface maybe due to it being sans-serif. Some companies that use ti include; American Apparel, The North Face, Skype, Microsoft, Jeep and American Airlines.

Century

I chose to look at the Gothic version of century because I enjoy its characteristics more, it is a sans-serif typeface in the geometric style, released by Monotype Imaging in 1991. It is strongly influenced by the font Futura, though with a higher x-height. Like many geometric sans-serifs, Century Gothic's design has a single-story "a" and "g", and an "M" with slanting sides resembling an upturned "W". Its uses include the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Battlefield Heroes, GMA network and Samsung ATIV.

Garamond

Claude Gammond designed the original design. These designs have been the basis for many modern versions of Garamond. Robert Slimbach created the Adobe version in 1989. They have large counters in the a and e, horizontal crossbar, long ascenders and descenders, f has a strong hook, diagonal top serifs slanting towards left. Garamonds characteristics were all influenced by calligraphy. It has been used by companies such as Apple, Google, Abercrombie and Fitch and Dr Zeus. As a whole the typeface I think is authentic, elegant and quite traditional.

Futura

Futura was inspired by the Bauhaus design style, designed by Paul Renner in 1924. It was first intended to be used for body text for books, because it is seen to be very clear and easy to read, it is commonly used in headlines in advertising. As a typeface it has many characteristics such as a low cross bar, the 'o' is a perfect circle, the counterspace is circular, it has pointed apex and the ascenders rise above the ascender line. It has been used in companies such as HP, Volkswagen, Ikea, Absolut Vodka, Crayola and Supreme. As a whole I like the typeface however I think it is very generic and possibly too clean.