Just My Type
Typography course journal cover
Typography course journal cover
For a period of 10weeks, I consumed pearls of wisdom about everything type: type as history, typeas a way of conveying information, and type as a graphic and concept. At theculmination of the course, we were asked to combine every handout, classexercise, and homework assignment into a single journal. But how can one judgea book without its cover? So we were also asked to design some sort of coverwherein these pearls and practices would reside. We had several weeks tobrainstorm and draft, with little or no stipulation of size, shape, color ormedia—just as long as it said the name of the course, the school, and our ownname. With my love for fine art, I thought of including some hand-drawnelements, but I then I thought better of it and realized that being a courseabout type, that my cover should be - typographic. The advertisement for thecontents of this journal, in its repetition of letterforms, would be textural,bold, crisp and engaging, while reflecting my personal tastes in designaesthetic. And what is type without copy? This one’s copy is explanatory whilecheeky.
Here is the font cover. This page, like all of thefollowing, were created in Illustrator, printed out on a cardstock, cut down tothe exact size of a blank, cardboard 3-ring binder, and then glued onto thebinder. All text is in Futura, a fabulously geometric sans serif; each page iskerned appropriately.
This is the inside cover, with the required artist’s name aswell as the discretionary explanation of what my readers were about to getthemselves into. I chose the term “exploration” very deliberately; through bothour readings and assignments we got a comprehensive tour, though not alwaysguided, of the world of type. I am also quite partial to bold, warm colors…maybeit’d because I live in Seattle, and I don’t get enough of them.
And then back, inside cover, bringing you the other twopieces of required information. As you can see, it’s color scheme and layoutreflect the front two, but due to the fact that it’s the back cover and thenature of the written information, I wanted it to be more of an afterthought,and so it’s smaller and comfortably nestled at the very bottom of the page.
Finally, the back, outside cover. It’s a reflection of thefront, minus the red “just my type.”
