Pelayo, Ma.

Alexandra HUM Elec 101

BA COMM-4

Typography as a Statement of Design

This article contains my learnings, insights, and personal reaction from the reading material
“Typography as a Statement of Design.”

First, I would like to state my observations while reading the entire article. I noticed that I have not
encountered any words that are hard to understand. The words are simple and concise and with the help
of the illustrations, each part is easier to understand. And so, I’m very amaze that the authors made the
article more “newbie friendly” for people who doesn’t understand the jargons in designing.

As a communication student who also has an experience with basic graphic designing for school
newspaper in my Senior High School, I always thought that the typography is all about the different fonts
of text. It doesn’t matter what font that I will use, as long as it matches the other elements in a design. In
the sense that, when designing a newspaper, all fonts should be simple and there are standard margin
and lines that are easy to follow. But now that I’ve read the article, typography is very much more than
“just fonts”. As the stated in the article, typography “is much more than just letters and words on a page.”
With that, I learned that I still have a long way to go.

I found out that the proper word for font is typeface. And that typography is not just about the
“fonts” or typefaces, but also about its size, line length, and spacing. This article made me realize that
with the use of correct type face, type size, and other visual arrangement, it can convey a message more
than the text itself. Typography basically helps the text to have an impact to the readers, and it can also
affect their mood, personality, and preferences. In this article, the critical role of every designer is that they
should design a page that fits their text and other elements, and the text should convey the right message
with the help of proper typography so that it can catch people’s attention and help them understand
information. When I read the statement, “attention is the reader’s gift to designer,” I remembered when I
took a course called “Advertising Principles & Practices” in my former school.

It was very memorable as we were given projects where we individually advertised our own
products using live presentation, video advertisement, and print advertisement. Our professor, Mr.
Romnick Sarmento, didn’t discussed any principles of advertising, nor gave us any reading materials. So,
we proceeded to complete the project just for the sake of passing the subject. But during our online
presentation, we realized that our own presentations are the discussions itself, he kindly pointed out all of
our mistakes and gave us so much learning about advertising and designing. I also noticed that
typography seems like a big deal to him as he scolded us about the typefaces that we used. But now I
realized that typefaces have significant role as it might either make or break a design.
 I remembered that our professor had some lectures about print advertisement, in non-verbatim,
he said that the time of the readers are very precious, and we should design a worthy advertisement that
worth their time and effort. I, too, can very much relate to that as I also notice through scrolling social
media that when a poster isn’t that impactful, I will not read it nor pay attention to it. This article confirmed
all my insights from that class, and it helped me realize more that typography should attract the reader’s
attention, present information in an effective manner, help the reader understand information, and
organize the text in order of significance or hierarchy.

I agree with the statement of Beatrice Warde in the article, that typography is “an effective tool in
in both art and communicating.” I also believe that typography is like a bridge, it interconnects the art and
communication. A design also has variation of elements, and a designer might also use a variation of
typefaces in a font, so it is important that there should be harmony while expressing the right message.
With that, as what stated in the article, typography’s dual role is “to represent a concept, and to do so in a
visual form,” hence, typography plays a significant role in a design. I learned that the type or texts can
convey emotion through its appearance, like when they are “light or bold, round or square, short or long,
wide or narrow, slim or heavy.” Basically, they can make their own impression and personality as they
may look formal, casual, stiff, ugly, loud, shouting, surprised, etc.

Since type can be very expressive, I also learned that typefaces should not be the reader’s focus
as they may not understand the actual message. So, typography should catch the reader’s attention but
not too distracting to the point that they can not understand the message. To achieve this, I found in the
article that there is certain standard to type size – 10pt font for print design, while 13px font for web, but
also, it depends based on the audience’s age. These standards will help the typography more readable.
There is also a “font family” which composes of all styles and sizes of typefaces and it comprises roman,
italic, bold, and bold italic. Basically, font types have four main groups which are serif, sans-serif,
handwriting, and decorative.

Choosing and using the proper typeface can help to catch the reader’s attention and create an
effective communication as all of these typefaces conveys different message. In conclusion, as stated in
the article, “typography is the fundamental component of design, and even an element on its own,” and I
definitely agree. Throughout reading the article, it made me realize the true significance of typography as
is can make or break a design. Sometimes, I spent so much time in choosing the right type face, but now
I realized that it’s okay and normal as it helps the readers to understand the meaning and the message.