All right. 1
Fire up your Figma. 2
Time for another typography assignment. 3
We're going to put everything you have learned so far about typefaces into practice. Just like in the 4
previous assignment, 5
I have arranged three text blocks. This time they are all in single typeface. 6
Your task is to pick 2 font pairings for each text block. 7
Plus, just like you did in the previous exercise, set the type for each text to achieve: 1. Good hierarchy. 8
2. And second, good readability. 9
Just like you've done the last time. You will pick a total of 6 different fonts, 3 for headlines 10
and 3 for paragraph text. When you choose your typefaces, 11
I want you to use what you have learned about type personality. 12
Rewatch the video about personalities, 13
if you need to. I want you to think about the context that you are choosing for. 14
And pick one of the typefaces that shows the personality, that is good for that context. 15
As you read the headlines you will notice that first text is about travel and Hawaii. 16
Second one is about cooking and barbecue. And the third one is about technology. 17
Now here's a hint, the type with a personality should be for the headline. For the paragraph, you should 18
choose something a bit more neutral with high readability. 19
By the way, if you're wondering why the text doesn't end properly. I just didn't put the entire article 20
in there. It's just an excerpt from some random blog articles that I picked. 21
Let me do a demo for the first one. So the text is about travel to the islands of Hawaii. 22
Now I'm going to think about, what sort of typeface can display that feeling of travel to beautiful sandy 23
beaches. To get a better feel of the style of such theme, I'm going to Google some images of Hawaii and see 24
if there is some sort of style of a typography that is used locally in Hawaii. 25
With a quick search, I can see that there are actually certain typefaces that are used in Hawaiian theme. 26
This for example. Might also search for things like postcards and signs in Hawaii. 27
Look at that. 28
Now I have authentic examples of typography that is actually in use on the islands and that will remind 29
people of Hawaii. 30
It seems like the Script/Handwritten typeface is the way to go. 31
Let's see what I can find on Google fonts that matches this theme. 32
I'm going to filter only handwriting fonts and will paste in our text to give me the exact demonstration. 33
You can see that, there are several fonts that can be quite suitable. 34
This Dancing Script for example looks good. 35
Pay attention to the font name. 36
A lot of times they will give you the hint on what's the theme of the font. 37
Because I googled some images and real examples beforehand, I was able to get the right feel for Hawaii. 38
Now picking the font is much easier, because I can recognize similarities in the postcards and signs. 39
As I browse fonts, I am also looking for those that have high readability. 40
It doesn't matter that it's a headline, I still want it to be readable. Difficult to read fonts like these 41
are going to be a bad choice, no matter how good they look. 42
Okay, I think I have enough to choose from. Now I'm going to read the manual of these fonts that I've selected, 43
to see what where they intended for. First is Dancing Star, 44
I already see a problem with this one. On capitalized sentence, like in my headline, the readability was 45
better. But on lower case words readability is significantly decreased. 46
Yes, I'm going to use uppercase for my headline, but what if I changed my mind? 47
It very much limits my options. 48
The second, is Kaushan Script. Kaushan, 49
not sure. The description of the font is quite neutral. 50
It doesn't look like it was intended for a very limited to theme. 51
It looks quite fun and laid back, just the way I would imagine being in Hawaii. So I'm going to go with 52
it. 53
One thing you'll notice here is that a headline isn't really aligned with the paragraph. 54
This happens a lot with large display text. 55
They have extra space and you will need to fix this manually. 56
Otherwise, the design will look unaligned. 57
Remember our lesson about optical illusions? Ruler isn't what matters in design. 58
It's the eye. 59
If something looks not aligned, then it's not aligned. 60
Done. 61
Now, it looks on the dot. For the paragraph, 62
I'm gonna go with something neutral. 63
The obvious choice would be a Sans Serif font. 64
I'm going to change the tex style to Paragraph from here, and apply to All Specimens. 65
This way I can clearly see how they look in paragraph. 66
Open Sans is an obvious choice, is a very popular and an excellent font. 67
Roboto is another very popular font. 68
I quite like Lato. 69
It's a very good font that I use frequently. 70
It has a very nice style even on headlines. 71
And look at this Lato means summer in Polish. 72
That's certainly a perfect font for our Hawaii theme. 73
This was a lucky shot. With neutral paragraph text, you don't have to go on a crazy search for the right 74
font, 75
that was designed with exactly the same feeling. 76
I'm going to make the paragraph more like a dark grey rather than a full contrast black. 77
This is a great way to add airiness to paragraph text without using a thinner font weight. Avoid themed 78
styles for body texts, because they're not very good on, low-resolution screens. 79
There, we have it. 80
2 font pairs for a Hawaii themed text block. 81
It looks exciting? Yes. It's stylish and it's easy to read. 82
Now it's your turn. 83
One more thing. 84
On top of each text block, I want you to write down your reasoning behind your font choices, as you've 85
already done in the type personality assignment, remember? Writing down your thought process is going 86
to get you used to thinking like a designer. 87
You will start seeing things on deeper and more detailed level. 88
And also you'll realize often, that you made a choice for a font without thinking about it. Because maybe 89
it just look pretty.