I had to type a research paper for my typography class. A list with various fonts and typographers was passed around the room and everyone in the class chose one. I was one of the last people to get the list, so my choices were pretty slim. For no particular reason, I went with Adrian Frutiger and his “Univers” font.

As part of the assignment I was required to critique the typeface. Univers is not a very exciting looking font, but chances are you’ve seen it multiple times in your life. It’s clean, simple, and easy to read so it’s used quite a bit. One interesting tidbit is that Univers is used in the opening crawl of the Star Wars movies (But only for the name of the movie. For example, when it says “A NEW HOPE” and not for the entire crawl itself). Apple also used it on their keyboards for many years.

For my research paper, I compared Univers to Helvetica because they came out around the same time and look similar in many ways. One distinguishing characteristic of Univers, however, is that the capital G does not have a spur on it and Helvetica does.

I noticed something peculiar while I was adding paper to my printer today. I have a small Missy Higgins tour poster from Australia hanging just above it, and, for some reason, I noticed the “G” in “HIGGINS” looked oddly familiar. It was, of course, the Univers font in one of its 21 variations.

This just proves that it’s fate. Missy and I are meant to be together. Why else would I have randomly chosen Univers? It’s in the cards, folks. It’s destiny. I rest my case.

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My sister, Ly (AKA “The Pod“) has guessed the sound correctly. The mysterious noise is the sound of me feeding a nickel into a pay phone on campus. Here is a breakdown of the sound and why everything is the way it is in this, a more finalized concept version of my onomatopoeia project.

As I mentioned, I’m not allowed to just fill in the composition with any shapes unless they relate to the text somehow. In this case, the black box represents the pay phone. It’s flush against the wall, and so I moved box from the first concept to the far right side of the page. The pay phone on campus does not accept nickels. It just drops them down to the coin return. This is why the word goes in a semi-circular motion from the top (the coin slot) to bottom (the coin return) and doesn’t stay within the black box. The text also changes font and color for a reason. It starts out as the Futura font because it’s relatively round and fat (like a nickel) and changes to Bodoni because by the time it enters the pay phone it makes a more mechanical sound. Since I’m limited to a specific list of fonts, I think Futura and Bodoni work the best. Because the nickel eventually returns to the coin tray, the font changes from Bodoni back to Futura. The black to white change in the text is also intentional. I made the box black and the text white to represent the path of the nickel traveling inside the pay phone (inside the pay phone would be dark, so therefore the box is dark, too).

Congratulations, counselor, you figured it out.

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My latest Typography project involves Onomatopoeia. Simply put, onomatopoeia means a word is spelled the same as it sounds. Ironically, the word itself it hard as hell for most people to spell properly.

As with any of my Typography assignments, there are guidelines. They’re not nearly as limiting as the rules for some of my earlier projects, and for that I am glad. The rules are pretty straightforward and simple. First, find a sound on the college campus, describe it in detail (what time, where were you, what created it, how was it created, etc.). Then spell it out as you think the sound would be spelled. Using select fonts (there’s a list of about 7 or 8 and includes both serif and sans-serif), create a 9 x 9 image that portrays your sound.

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The project is not due yet, and we are still very much in the early stages of it. These are two of my concepts so far. They are very, VERY rough concepts, so don’t go by the [lack of] quality of them.

This design has to be black and white only, and shapes can only be used in association with the text (You can’t just stick a circle or square anywhere you’d like, you have to use it with the text somehow. Kinda like the arrow formed in the Fed Ex logo by the negative space of the letters). Changing the fonts or the size can help emphasize the sound (or parts of the sound) as well. Also, while color is not allowed, black and white can be used to symbolize emotion (For example, if you were going to do a sound of rubbing a balloon, you might make the background white with the text “floating” within the design like a balloon would float. Or bold text could symbolize a louder sound). I’ve got about twenty rough ideas, but these two are my favorites so far. While the project is certainly not the most interesting that I have ever done, it’s certainly not the worst, either.

See if you can figure out what the sound is, because I’m not going to tell you. I will, however, give you a bit of a clue. The image on the top was done long before the image on the bottom with the black rectangle, and I think the black part of it it helps in deciphering the sound it’s supposed to represent. I’m still playing with what fonts best represent the sound, so you’re kind of at a disadvantage in guessing since I haven’t yet decided on which one(s) to use. Everything else in the concepts is intentional, though, so have at it.

Or maybe it’s just a complete failure. What the hell do I know?