The Relevancy and Application of Typography within Graphic Design

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Introduction:
Typography has played a major role in our history from scribes with handwritten texts to the invention of the printing press, to its use on our Personal Computers in word processors and design programs in our everyday lives (Ben Barrett-Forrest, 2013, n.p [online video]). Although many people will never understand the importance of typography, it forms a very big part of graphic design. Typography, from a graphic design perspective, will make or break a design, and is the deciding factor between a good design, and a bad design. Typography is used in many was in graphic design; information graphics, corporate identities, logos, web designs and many others, however the area I wish to discuss typography’s importance is poster design. Although posters can be purely visual, you will seldom come across a poster with no form of wording or typography on it. It is for this reason I want to base my essay on this – posters are used to advertise events, products and are also used to portray information, and this information cannot be portrayed without the use of good typography. By looking at the poster designs of Jules Chéret and Henri Toulouse Lautrec, posters from Nazi Propaganda and US war recruitment, as well as more recent works by the graphic designer Paula Scher, I want to show how the type’s physical style and look changed, but it’s use stayed the same although certain posters are more effective than others simply because of the typography used. By taking this knowledge and then looking at the basic framework of how to design a poster and how to make use of typography ‘correctly’ in today’s times, we are still using the same methods as the designers before us.

Posters are supposed to attract our attention, convey info...

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...the trial and error of poster designers throughout the years, we have been able to come up with a straightforward algorithm for creating good posters, which just needs to be read and understood for the design to be good and visually appealing. The propaganda posters from the world wars were a good starting point to see how the physical shapes of the type changed, which backs up the ideas mentioned in the History of Typography short film. We then also see how posters do a full 180 degree twist when it came to Chéret and Lautrec, then coming across Scher, where typography is used as a counterweight to the visuals, and then changing to actually become the visuals themselves. Then for a company to release such an in-depth ‘how to’ guide about typography proves its importance’s within graphic design since a bad design will not be as successful as a good, clear design.

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