You Can Say Love With Typography
How can you express romance via typography?
How do you express your love? Musically with a song? Kinetically with a dance? Classically with a lovely letter? Or maybe some touchy-touchy feely-feely? Lol Well, how about giving a shot with some typography next time?
Typography is a way of visual communication using types.
Let’s say you are a designer tasked with conveying a feeling of love and respect toward people who are devoted to the pursuit of mathematical truth. It’s a story of friendship between geniuses from cultures far apart but united by their common passion: “solving a theorem concerning the partition of numbers into a sum of smaller integers.” (I have no idea what I just copy and paste.)
We are dealing with a tribe of geniuses. The fonts definitely need to look super smart. How can you “show” the voice of logic through types? How can you make your font look smart?
A smart font is a small font. It’s going to look even more sophisticated if it comes with detailed garnishings. Look how it is done in the film, “The Man Who Knew Infinity.”
The typography was a perfect reflection of how crazy smart that Ramanujan was. (Designer Tip: If you want to appear smart, make your font small. Don’t overdo it because you’d be seen as a lone genius if it's too hard to read for the rest of the world.)
Switching gears now.
How about in the case of interpreting the concept of love in a more G-rated, family-friendly setting?
Let’s say you want to show “my-family-first” kind of vibe. “We stick together and we’ll kick anyone’s ass if they mess with us” sort of family tie is what you need to communicate. We are now talking about more muscles and homies. I mean we are talking about the “Bromance” situation so to speak.
Naturally, the font needs to look tough. Ready to make your font look “strong?”
The font abso-f***ing-lutely needs to be big. It needs to make a clear statement that “nobody f*** with my family!”
“The Fate Of The Furious” provides a perfect example.
The director’s name seen in its opening is written in easy-to-read all uppercase with shadow providing additional contrast for legibility. In “The Man Who Knew Infinity,” the director’s name is in much smaller mixed case letters with less contrast to the background.
If you compare how they show the locations, it becomes in-your-face obvious. (Designer Tip: To appear confident, make your font heftier. Be careful with the use of shadow and make sure you tone it down with lowering contrast/opacity. Otherwise, you’d look obnoxious.)
Love, fear, anger, sadness, the list of our emotions goes on. Some of us were brought up in a way that we can express our feelings in healthy ways. And some of us were not, unfortunately. But we can all learn new and creative ways to express and share our emotions regardless of our past. I just wanted to share with you some of the best practices I’ve seen in the films. They help me as my daily source of inspiration and I hope you can stay close to your source of inspiration as well.
