Thoughtful Chunk 3: Font Conference and Text Power

Below we have an amusing take on our fascination with the look and consequent meaning attributed to text. It also speaks to a more trivialized intention perhaps: that we spend too much time playing with appearance, rather than attending to message, of such text. Hmm....on the other hand, the very graphical use of, placement of, and stylistic choice of fonts, may be a very visualized way of utilizing the power of text to speak the message: This seems to be more and more the case in our increasingly digitize-able and manipulate-able world.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

For example, the following shows Gleekin's attempt to use the power of text to accentuate the meaning or message of Taylor Mali's spoken poem called, "What Teachers Make."
 

 Jakob Nielsen lauds the judicious use of text in Google ads, as, in this very visual of worlds, "Google ads force a focus on crisp and plain content that might actually communicate something in the second or two users typically allocate to reading ads" (Nielsen, Alertbox, September 2, 2001: Designing Web Ads Using Click-Through Data)

More below on Typography from Michael Bierut, who studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati, and has been a partner in the New York office of Pentagram since 1990. Michael is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art.

(Our class media wiki on Text and Typography has further examples and suggestions for using textual components effectively.)