Tag Archives: typefaces

Typography is changing, are you ready?

Typography is changing. Two decades dominated by sans serif typefaces are coming to an end, which type designer Charles Nix describes as “the waning end of a supertrend”. Are you (and your team) ready for this new and exciting typographic landscape?

Find out about workshops / Arrange a 10-minute call

It’s an exciting time to explore how type reflects culture right now. I was delighted to run online workshops recently with the inspiring type designers at international type foundry Monotype. This was such a brilliant opportunity for all of us to compare notes as we explored the themes and trends we’ve been seeing and chatted about what we think is coming next.

“I loved the event. I know we are trying to make do with the pandemic situation, but I truly feel like this event was even more impactful and inspirational with this format than being with a bunch of people in an auditorium. Sarah was amazing.”

I think that looking at what’s changing typographically reveals the wider cultural themes of what people care about today. After a year when so much has changed, what things really matter to you today? What do you really value and/or what no longer seems important?

Are you and your team ready for the new typographic landscape and the fast-paced changes that are happening?

How to spot and decode typography trends

You can spot the trends and themes for yourself by keeping a visual diary and by following the people who are talking about what’s happening. This is a great way to future proof your typographic skills in a time of fast-paced change that trends, foresight and strategy company The Future Laboratory call “the great acceleration”.

  1. Think about what’s important to you, how might this have changed over the last year?
  2. When you look at what’s happening in the world, how are cultural attitudes changing?
  3. Take a look at the typographic landscape of the products and services you interact with today—can you see any styles or themes becoming prominent that you might not have seen a few years ago?
  4. When you think about these in context of changing cultural attitudes, do you think there are any links?
  5. Are there any companies or products that you think are doing this really well (or really badly)?
  6. How can you incorporated what you’ve observed into your own design process?

Want to find out faster?

You can book a highly interactive online workshop wherever you are in the world. Your team will be prepared for this exciting new typographic landscape with the tools they need to make effective typography choices.

Decoding Type Trends (Semiotics) Masterclass

From £800 (education discounts are available).
This is a live online workshop, which can be delivered anywhere in the world.
Availability is limited.

Discover how to decode the typography of everyday products. What does it reveal about changing moods and attitudes? How does it motivate your decisions? How can you future-proof your typographic choices? With a formula for making typographic choices that you can use today and into the future.

Ideal for designers, communications and marketing teams, students.

Find out more

Arrange a 10-minute call

What’s your typographic superpower?

A meditation in typography for people with a fondness for fonts.

A fun game created by Adobe Fonts and Sarah Hyndman to showcase the new browse-by-tags feature that lets you help build the Adobe Fonts collection of tags. More fonts and tags will be added in the future.

The game was built by Oddbird with sound created by Rob Taliesin Owen.

Play the game here https://game.fonts.adobe.com/

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How designing for all the senses has more impact on mood

We absorb information through all of our senses simultaneously. This speeds up our ability to judge situations and react quickly and is fundamental to our ability to recognise signals and communicate. This played a vital role in human survival when our ancestors needed to respond to danger quickly, often relying on sound or smell when it was dark and a large proportion of our genes are still devoted to detecting odours.

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Font of Coincidence from London to Mumbai

Archik Siya, Why Fonts MatterShashital Tejusvin, Why Fonts MatterKoshe Prajakta, Why Fonts Matter

Font of Coincidence
This is a story of my trip to teach in India. While I was there I met up with family of friends and discovered, to my surprise, that my book cover had been redesigned by a whole class of students for their typography exam that week.

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Programme of Type Tasting events for the London Design Festival

ldf-programme

By Sarah Hyndman

Type Tasting founder Sarah is on a mission to make typography fun and engaging for everybody, not just designers. She specialises in making the complex topic accessible with originality, humour, a dash of theatre and lashings of audience participation. She delivers interactive talks and events with games and demonstrations that inform, entertain and challenge your preconceptions.

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What’s your type of lover? CNN

CNN CNN

In celebration of the official publication of Why Fonts Matter in the US today we’re looking back over articles and interviews that give a glimpse of the impression we’ve made on the world at large.

Jake Wallis Simons from CNN came to the Type Tasting studio and played a selection of Type Tasting Games. “As bizarre as it sounds, my job is to match up the bottles and fonts using only my sense of smell.”

CNN
What’s your type of lover? How fonts could help you find the perfect date
By Jake Wallis Simons

Final Weekend

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FINAL WEEKEND
It’s the final weekend to purchase a copy of the first edition of The Type Taster: Why Fonts Influence You
Books purchased this weekend will all be signed and have free UK postage
This first, limited edition of the book is only available until the end of Sunday 25th October 2015.

From 28th January 2016 The Type Taster will be published as Why Fonts Matter under the Virgin Books imprint of Penguin Random House.

Click here to pre-order Why Fonts Matter

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Talking fonts live on BBC Radio 4

Sophie Thompson Peter Bleksley
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Yesterday I was invited to be one of the guests on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live to talk about how we respond to typefaces. I took along some of the games that had gone down so well at the Pop-up Type Tasting at the V&A for the London Design Festival the previous weekend. Above is actor Sophie Thompson playing the ‘Feel Me’ game matching what she can feel to one of the fonts shown, if you came along to the event last weekend you know exactly which font she’s feeling from the expression on her face!

It was such an interesting programme to be on. Sophie is delightful and a pleasure to listen to, and I was excited to meet Peter Bleksley who is one of the hunters on ‘Hunted’ with the most amazing voice. It seems that we would all love the challenge of being on the next series and going on the run in an attempt to evade capture for 28 days. Third guest Trevor Lyttleton founded a charity which works with the elderly and we had a great chat afterwards about the power of typefaces on packaging to trigger nostalgia and bring back memories.

Scroll down for links to listen to the show.

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Learn about typography: The Type Taster student discount offer

student pack of games

Are you a UK design student? Prepare yourself for the new year with a discounted copy of The Type Taster and free postage (save £5). This is a book about typography from the point of view of the type consumer and takes you through the associations and science behind fonts influence you as a reader.

Buy it quickly! This edition is only available until 25th October.*
Student copies of the book will also include a selection of typography games (shown above).

subconscious

“You have really opened my eyes to such a brilliant subject. It’s already making me view design work from such a different view point and I have now become excited by the possibilities typefaces present while experimenting with them.” Design student Jessica Dutton

“This alongside the typography bible (Robert Bringhurst’s elements of typographic style) should become a staple in everyone’s collection.” James (Via Creative Review blog)

“This is no boring instructional tome on the correct use of ligatures, rather it takes a look at the emotional lives of fonts, and examines how their distinct personalities create (often subconscious) emotional responses.” Grafik

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Pop-up Typography Lab at the V&A for the London Design Festival

TypeTasting_LDF_logos

Have you ever wondered what a font might smell like? Whether it can make a product appear more expensive? Or what your choice of font says about your personality?

Join innovative type expert Sarah Hyndman as she invites you to join in with the research by taking part in a series of entertaining games and perception experiments with type. Profile the personalities of typefaces; judge whether a font can make a product more expensive and therefore more enjoyable, and explore whether it could even alter the taste of what you eat. Find out which typefaces you would date, ditch or be ‘just good friends’ with and how they reflect your own personality. Sarah is the founder of Type Tasting, author of ‘The Type Taster: How Fonts Influence You’.

You are invited into a ‘typographic wonderland’ of interactive games and experiments involving fonts which are designed to surprise and intrigue. These explore our role as type consumers and show how type is woven into the rituals of our everyday lives. Each font/typeface has a personality that influences our interpretation of the words we read by evoking our emotions and setting the scene. Come along and you can be a part of this innovative research and be the first to find out the results.

• Try on ‘font goggles’ to reveal what some fonts are really communicating to you.
• Try your hand at font sniffing: can you match the smells to the typefaces?
• Witness fonts altering the meanings of words right before your very eyes.
• Be amazed that a font could have the power to alter the taste of your food.
• See what personalities fonts have, and what they reveal about YOUR personality.

Questions being explored:
• Can a font make a product appear more expensive?
• Do fonts have recognisable personalities?
• Can a typeface alter the taste of what you eat?
• Can a font alter the mood of what you read?
• When is a Serif a better choice than a Sans Serif typeface, why?

“You’ll never look at fonts in the same way again.” Hannah Stewart

TypeTasting_LDF2014

Print

“As bizarre as it sounds, my job is to match up the bottles and fonts using only my sense of smell.” Jake Wallis Simons, CNN

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