what we do
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- janne760
that is truly sad, Rand. people can be so evil. :'(
- johndiggity0
the fact that people don't understand design as a process is even more of a reason that designers are necessary. if there is no one to obsess over the details, then the details are truly lost, and this is where things begin to break down.
you could show me a pairs of pants stitched dozens of different ways and because i know nothing about tailoring, i would be at a loss to differentiate one from the other. however, after my pants split because the wrong type of seam was employed, i will certainly notice the difference.
careful consideration is the duty of any designer, especially someone involved in wide ranging applications like corporate identity. if it goes unnoticed, all the better. that means nothing broke and you did the most important part of your job.
- gramme0
@ jimbo: I grant that 99% of the people in the world can't see the difference between say, Times and Mercury, but if you set a logotype using both and show them side by side, you can easily point out to people the differences, which are then immediately apparent: Mercury has higher contrast, firmer footing, sharp serifs, exaggerated ball terminals, and more even color; Times is thinner, narrower, and has bracketed serifs. Mercury feels stronger and possibly more masculine because of these characteristics; Times is more delicate and perhaps feminine. There's a time and place for each, although on a personal level I hate Times.
The reality is that even with such comparisons and solid bullshitting tactics, good typography matters a lot more than choosing Times vs. Mercury or Arial vs. Helvetica. In an airport, for instance, it can determine whether a traveler misses their flight because they can or can't find their way around.
A painter is judged by his skill, not the quality of his brushes. That being said, a good painter doesn't choose brushes arbitrarily; he picks sable over synthetic, brass over tin, lacquered over untreated wood. He picks brushes using criteria that allow his work to be done without any technical snafus. There are personal affiliations with brands, heft, size, etc.; but there is a level of objectivity in choosing quality over commodity.
At the end of the day though, mediocre designers use good fonts, and good designers use good typography.
- I dislike Times b/c it lacks personality, and seems poorly balanced going from uppercase to lower.gramme
- i second the balance sentimentversion3
- i agree what gramme said, but i disagree that $1400 goes to buy a type family instead of helping the poor. as a church. it's your faulttypist
- and the tight arse eula from H&fj, means the church can't even use it for pdf to publictypist
- I hear you typist, but to be fair, the church spends way, way more than $1,400 per year in helping the poor.gramme
- identity0
really like the last sentence - and I SEE where you're going with Times New Roman. Truth is, I prefer its predecessor Plantin more, but I've been able to make some real gems with Times - its only good in Bold, tightly kerned and sparingly...
- identity0
- Move Collective to the left.jimbojones
- "olle" really needs to be opened up a bit.johndiggity
- maybe a slightly more discerning font?janne76
- pango0
this thread is truly depressing.... i'm gonna go kill some kittens now...
- ukit0
********* MUSICAL INTERLUDE *********
- jimbojones0
@gramme, the client is persuadable, it is your job to sell him your decisions. the people who know nothing about your decisions won't care. I had a wordmark set in customized Prelo Slab, then after I haded out the project, I saw some promotional stuff with the wordmark set in Courier. NOBODY noticed!
You won't miss a flight if the signage is set in Comic Sans, you will read it just fine, be the only one who boards with a terrified face but nobody else will give a fuck. If someone can't find something, then not because of poor type choice but because of failed signage logic.
Documents won't exlpode if you just stick to Times and Arial. We say stuff would look interchangable but the point is that it would affect only folks who actually can differ Times and other serif fonts. Another story, back in the days we did a catalogue for Merceds Benz, all body copy in Corporate A of course. We were assigned a new printer who didn't want PDFs (they weren't as largely supported then) and assured us that he already had the Corporate family from previous jobs with Benz. He meant Corporate S though. When we got the catalogue, way after the deadline of course, we were looking for a tree to hang ourselves up because all body copy was in the best serif match to the type the printer didn't have, you've guessed it: Times.
Nobody noticed.Using H&FJ fonts is its own chapter to me, it's so safe and therefore kinda lame although they are excellent of course. Selling them to a church though is so wrong IMO. Mercury is not the only font to fit the brief out there, and finding a cheaper typeface also belongs to designer's service I believe. But I hate the whole idea of churches getting branded so whatever.
- I think you might've missed my point in the airport illustration. Was talking about legibility and location, not font choice per se.gramme
- my point is that legibility is not an issue even with comic sansjimbojones
- gramme0
I think you've made your point quite thoroughly jimbo, and I hear where you're coming from. For reasons I've mentioned above, I think it's still worthwhile to pay attention to details that no one may ever notice. If all else fails, I still go back to the idea of excellence—it's always worth the time to make things excellent, that is as long as one isn't being wasteful (which I think is a relative concept and means different things for different clients).
I agree with you that it's a designer's job to find affordable solutions for clients. On the topic of wastefulness and paying $1,400 for fonts, let me give you a bit more background on the project for my church. I had set the logotype in Mercury, which my former employer already had in their font library. I too thought that $1,400 for fonts was pricey for a church, so instead I proposed Glosa by Dino Dos Santos. Glosa is a great family of display and text fonts, with similar design qualities to Mercury. The price tag of $500 seemed much more reasonable for a church of their size.
But when I told them the logotype was set in Mercury, they asked how much it would cost to use that family instead of Glosa. I said "$1,400", and a couple of them scratched their heads. Then one elder asked "is that a recurring fee or a one-time expense?" I replied, "once and for all". His response was "well, if we only have to pay for it once, and it's something that's perfectly harmonious with our logo, and our publications staff can use the fonts, then what are we waiting for? Let's do it." Several other people in the room nodded or murmured their approval. I was shocked, but they clearly though it was worth the expense.
I hear what you're saying about church branding. I think many churches overdo it. Whether we overdid it here in this case, I'm not sure. You're entitled to draw your own conclusions. My only goal was to make something timeless and appropriate, that wouldn't need to be replaced for a long time.
- And also, what johndiggity said.gramme
- linky to the church thingy?jimbojones
- 3rd client on my websitey.gramme
- ah that, yeah I like the mark and most of the rest. didn't like this: http://imgur.com/owu… And your navigation is tiresome although goodlooking...jimbojones
- tiresome although goodlooking... I never got why any design manual would contain guidlines on building the logo, just hand over the .eps ffs... General ranting.jimbojones
- the logo, just hand over the .eps ffs... General ranting.jimbojones
- —Because it was been handed to some sweet but dense in-house people who don't know ass from elbow.gramme
- With the old logo, they routinely changed colors, fiddled with the icon, etc.gramme
- They needed explicit instructions in writing to show that the wordmark is an inherent part of the logo...gramme
- —and is not supposed to be messed with in any way. Believe me, if anyone were to mess with their logo, it would be these people.gramme
- these people.gramme
- neverblink0
@gramme; I think you were lucky that your client actually 'got it' (matching other texts to their wordmark/logo).
Unfortunatly there are a lot of clients that don't see it / get it. And thus wonder why they have to spend money on something they don't see/get. And I guess that's what this whole discussion is about. We, as Graphic Designers, need to educate our clients.
- neue75_bold0
came across this today, pretty much sums up what we'd already expect, funny never-the-less..
What is Graphic Design?
http://peoplethings.com/andblog/…
- jimbojones0
@gramme I agree with you that making things excellent (or at least to feel that the work you do is solid) is cool. It's really depressing though that we do it for ourselves in first place.
I once worked for a magazine as a freelancer, the font they used had all sorts of issues, ugly collisions, too big accents, no punctuation kerning etc. I fixed it all up (for free btw, the real gig was layout), showed the editor, who was a designer too. He said 95% of people won't notice it, and the 5% that would, probably don't read our mag.
- lukus_W0
jimbojones;
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that at the moment you're looking for too much from graphic design; it's a vocation where you can get away with choosing to excel if you decide to. There's enough to graphic design to keep most people satisfied and eager to keep improving.
The fact that the majority won't appreciate it is a moot point - we live in a world where the idiots are quite clearly winning. I reckon learning is reward enough sometimes. If you're not learning anything and your job's boring .. move on.
- gramme0
Yeah jimbo, I know the navigation on my site is tiresome. Like looking through a keyhole in a way. It bothers me too now that I've had several months worth of hindsight. Next update will have image thumbnails so people can jump around and immediately see how many images there are per project (17 images just for Formica is a lot to digest, I know). Right now you're flying blind without any clue what's there to see in each client section.
About that style guide. I don't like enormous brand manuals either, but I was dealing with unskilled secretaries who had been shoe-horned into producing publications on weekly and monthly cycles for the church. It was like teaching a bat to identify chromosomes through a microscope. With the old logo, they would routinely stretch the type, change color arbitrarily, show the logotype with or without the mark, etc. So I had to show diagrammed reasons why the logotype is in inherent part of the wordmark. Otherwise, they'd reset in in TNR and stack it in two lines to either side of the logo, which would look terrible. I didn't actually show details of the logo construction, only some pointers about the lock-up, clear space, color palette, and what specifically not to do.
They've already broken most of those rules, but at least I have a document to refer to when explaining what went wrong.
- secretaries are my natural enemies... Yeah, that was just general bitching as I noted, all cooljimbojones
