Any talented designer can tell you: Good, consistent typography is essential to building a strong brand. Deciding which typefaces will be used in a project is an important and long-considered choice. Typography is used to subliminally communicate ideas with the reader — the wrong type will send the wrong message. In this post, I'll be showcasing some examples of strong, communicative typography and giving tips on how to bring good type to your website and branding.

Type & message

Subtle differences between typefaces create entirely different type personalities. Type and layout can be used to convey a message to the reader, defining a brand's image. Common intentions are reliable, classy, professional, modern, quirky, or funky.

When used well, type can fill the role of an image, providing both impact and meaning. Distressed type and clashing colors portray the uncomfortable notion of war in this brochure for Emerson College as well as any photograph could, while reducing printing costs.



The Metro free commuter newspaper has good typography. They abandoned the classic news type conventions in lieu of a modern sans-serif face designed by Lucas de Groot. The Metro has a strong sense of hierarchy with an easily scannable mix of headlines, sub-headlines, pull quotes and running copy. The overall look is very cohesive, fresh, and actively engaging — well targeted for its young audience. The Metro has 20 million daily readers, making it among the most popular newspapers.



Take a look at these two logos, one for high-end dry cleaning chain Holly Cleaners, and one for a business based on cell phone texting.
Looking at the logos, what impressions do you get about the two companies? Which one is cheaper? Trendier? More classy? Which business do you think is older? What age group are they targeting?



Both brands have very well-developed graphic identities which excellently communicate their images through typography. This is great type design, and these are the questions designers ask themselves when evaluating a company's image.

Type on the web

Web typography is rapidly changing. For now, working with web type is difficult and limited to the use of very few typefaces. Interactivity and ease of use are vital to good web type. Here are some basic but important tips for functional web typography:

• Use contrast. Make sure type stands out strongly against its background


• Never underline text, unless it's a link. Use italics instead


• Don't use more than two fonts on a page


• At small sizes, use a sans-serif font


• Leave plenty of space around blocks of text to minimize distractions


• Above all, keep your sizes, colors, and fonts consistent across the whole site

New technologies, like sIFR and CSS 3's new @font-face property are growing in popularity and support. Soon, designers will be able to be as creative with web typography as they are with print. Until then, special care and expertise is needed to make eye-catching web type. Images with special fonts are used to simulate headlines, and stylesheets are carefully edited to control type. Different users will see the same web page differently, so any typographic design for the web must be flexible and extendable.

When a website is well designed with careful attention to the typography, it looks professional and stands out from the crowd. See this interesting resource: The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web.

The Metropolis Creative team's favorite typography sites are Typographica and the type articles on Smashing Magazine.

Labels: bad branding, online typography, type design, type logo, typography

I used to work as an Emergency Medical Technician in Rochester, NY when I was in college. As a graphic design student, people asked what being an EMT had to do with design. At the time, I just shrugged and said that I liked doing it.

When we would arrive on the scene, calls were usually not what they seemed to be. We would sometimes get called for a broken arm, and it would be a sprained ankle — which is why EMTs are taught to determine the "Mechanism of Injury." If the sprained ankle occurred from falling down a flight of stairs, then we assumed there may be other injuries that we couldn't see. The challenge was to piece together the whole big picture — first from the patient, then from the bystanders, and then from any other clues such as medicines or other things lying around.

Sometimes, people would leave out key details because they didn't think they were important. Or sometimes they were afraid they did something wrong, and didn't want to admit to it. So it was our job to try and understand the whole situation, and the perspectives of the people involved, in order to determine the best course of action.

Most of the patients we took to the hospital didn't have money or family, and had all sorts of other issues. I had partners who would yell at the drunks and ignore the old people from the nursing homes. I figured I only had about an hour with each patient, so I'd make the best of it. I used to challenge myself with the really angry ones, to see if I could get them to smile before we got to the hospital. I would talk, ask questions, and treat each patient as if they were a relative of mine. They were, after all, someone's relative. Besides, if I treated each patient with respect and patience, it became much easier to get the information I needed to help them, and the whole experience became much more enjoyable.

So In retrospect, my work as an EMT actually helped a lot to prepare me for when I would eventually own my own graphic design studio. I still assess each new situation, gather facts, make a plan of action and then my team of designers and I go to work. I do miss the flashing lights though.

Labels: customer service, emergency medical technician, EMT, graphic design studio