Saturday, May 23rd, 2009
You can't make everything bold
I'm slowly learning about font types, sizes and styles, but I'm not ready to write a post about anything too interesting.
What I can write a post about is a common problem with typography decisions. The problem occurs when people don't define their priorities. If you don't know what elements on a page should be the focus, you'll end up trying to make everything the focus which is a mess.
My dad has a Deep Purple cd with a section where they're doing a sound check and someone says something to the effect of, "Everyone turn up louder than everyone else." This is exactly what happens with text and typography in a lot of design.
For an example, look at the text from this new Dos Equis ad campaign. Maybe I'm a nerd, but the first time I saw these commercials, I was incredibly distracted by the lack of focus. Every single word is either in all caps, or italicized. Even worse is that there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to why a word is formatted the way it is. I guess the important words are in all caps and the less important ones are italicized, but then how do you explain the main catch phrase:
"STAY THIRSTY, my friends"
It just doesn't make sense to me. Italics and all caps are meant to emphasize certain words. You can't emphasize every single word on a page. You can't make everything bold.
The new Zane Benefits corporate page that I talked about earlier this week shows my attempt at emphasizing the important words. I used italics on the words "solve" and "Health Benefits" because the main thing this page is trying to convey is that we offer a health benefits solution. If I had italicized, bolded, underlined and used all caps randomly throughout the page, that would make the important parts blend in with everything else.
I'm not trying to say that I did an amazing job with the typography on this page. Everything except for the logo is a relatively plain Arial font and I really don't know enough theory to do anything interesting. I'd rather not be interesting enough than be too interesting (like Dos Equis).
Stay tuned for some real typography posts (hopefully) Posted by Tyler King
This post has 4 Comments Bracken
May 25, 2009 at 08:34 am
In fairness to that ad, the entire point of the campaign is being over the top. "He lives vicariously through himself" isn't exactly a great phrase either, but it fits the style of the campaign. All they want to get across is their brand, and I think they do it pretty successfully with their logo being the clear focus of the ad (even the "most interesting man in the world" is pointing to the Dos Equis logo). May 25, 2009 at 11:41 am
Yeah, I think they get the point across well, but I don't agree that the text style helps. I find it distracting from what is otherwise a relatively clean image. I should say that I've disliked this whole ad campaign since the first time I saw it on Pandora. I couldn't figure out what they were talking about until I saw the tv ads a couple months later. May 27, 2009 at 12:05 am
I would hazard a guess that the horrible typography might be designed intentionally to make you spend more time staring at the ad. It's so bad it's difficult to read. All press is good press, right? ;) The fact that it makes no sense probably furthers this cause. You have no choice but to pause for a second and think about it, while red big X's stare back at you. It's interesting to me how pop songs repeat refrains on top of varied backgrounds (see Fall Out Boy especially) because switching it up, training you to decipher and anticipate the chorus across different beats, helps you remember it better (sticks in your head). May 27, 2009 at 11:07 am
How dare you use my own argument against me! So yeah, I guess you're right that it makes the ad more noticeable, but it also makes it harder to read. People might be more likely to notice the ad but I think they're less likely to understand what it means. This is particularly true with the TV commercials because you don't have time to pause and re-read everything. |
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