Tutors Guidance

Dear Yessica

How are you going to do this – is it a subjective appraisal of some faces? Make sure that the project has a bit of depth - that obviously that depends on exactly how you do it. Are you analysing what certain shapes mean to a western person’s emotions? This is getting into psychology!

What are you aiming to end up with or what do you want to say or prove or comment on? Maybe that ‘Stop stealing sheep’ book would have something on this area – I remember some pastiche examples within it.

It is interesting that maybe certain businesses use similar typefaces – eg Bodoni for Italian wine labels. This, I suppose, is a result of a perception of what the typeface represents.

Massimo Vignelli has often said that he only uses five typefaces: Garamond, Bodoni, Helvetica, Futura, Century (I think). I think he would argue that you can elicit any emotion by careful use of one of these.

Think about the fact that many typefaces were designed for a particular use – Bell for telephone directories; Times for newspaper production; Frutiger for signage (I think); etc. So the form and character is a result of technicalities amongst other things.

What about typefaces that are specially drawn for large company’s identity programmes? Now that IS manipulation of us! The idea is that they use a certain typographic form to get us to think of them as friendly, approachable, etc.

You could look at how typefaces have evolved over the years and why they have done so. What about the historical implications of a face?
You could speak to Dalton Maag (a type design studio) or get in touch with the Typographic Circle.

Maybe you should start with typeface classification as this is a basic way of describing faces. There are several methods of classification.

Good luck with this – I hope the above is food for thought and I look forward to seeing something. I am in on Thursdays but email is likely to be the best way of contacting me.

Kind regards

Ben