Download Episode 39Design Guy, Episode 39, Talking About Type: An Introductory WordDesign Guy here, welcome to the show. This is the program that explores timeless principles of design and explains them simply.Today, we turn our attention to Type. That grand subject of design, of graphic design in particular. And we&#39;ll seek to just approach the topic. This topic is the Everest of Graphic Design, and from a Graphic Design perspective, this is where a show like this one really begins. And that&#39;s because Typography is the heart and soul of graphic design. It&#39;s the bedrock. It&#39;s what makes graphic design what it is, and what separates it from other disciplines and arts.In an early episode, we set down the distinction between graphic design and the fine arts in order to make this very point. And it bears repeating, because often we&#39;re not clear on the difference. The lines between the visual arts seem kind of blurry, we might think the difference is one of mere format or of the techniques and tools employed to create the work. And while there&#39;s some truth to this, the ultimate distinction has to do with the role and purpose of type in graphic design. A difference in our objectives in using type.And what is that goal? Well, the goal is simply to communicate somebody&#39;s message. And while we might do it in an artful way, maybe an oblique or a slightly ambiguous way (perhaps to stimulate interest and attention and thought), ultimately, however, the message we&#39;re communicating is objective. There is a specific piece of communication intended, and, unlike the fine arts, where we&#39;re allowed to play in subjective spaces if we wish to, where beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and where meaning or message (if there&#39;s any intended) may be inferred in a purely personal way, that is not the case with graphic design. Graphic Design is a form of art that is linked to an objective typographic message. And that&#39;s with the intent of communicating something very definite, and of your audience receiving it as it was intended. And if we think about it, it just can&#39;t be otherwise. When Apple runs ads about the iPhone, you can be certain that they&#39;ll consider those ads to have failed if somehow you thought they meant for you to buy an Android phone, instead. When the state park posts a sign that says that they&#39;re closed at dark, or that you need to curb your dog, that&#39;s not open to the whim of your own private interpretation. The intent and the meaning are objective. This is not a realm where you can conclude that 1 +1 = 3, just because it turns you on to think so. So, our success as graphic designers is that we convey a definite message. And our principle means of achieving that goal is to encode the message in type, to craft our communications with all those letterforms that are the stuff of word and thought and meaning.Okay, so that&#39;s my preamble, and a bit of a repetition of points made before, so we&#39;

Design Guy, Episode 39, Talking About Type: An Introductory Word

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