I created Antypography to help educate designers in a way that was hopefully different than just another web gallery of good/bad designs. Kyle Meyer, Elliot Jay Stocks and Rett Martin created Typesites with the same intent, but focusing on providing insightful critiques on well-crafted sites instead of ridiculing the mistakes of bad ones.
Great idea. Great execution. Nice job, guys. I’ll be reading it regularly.
Ken @ February 6, 2008
They appear at the beginning of virtually every DVD or videotaped movie. We’ve all seen them but does anyone pay attention to them? I do, and I’m outraged! Not because I paid good money for a movie and should be able to make my own backups in case the disc goes bad without the fear of imprisonment being shoved down my throat, but because the schmos who design these title slugs don’t know how to follow some of the most basic rules of typesetting. Notice anything odd about line 2? How about line 3? If not, let me explain:
Is it possible that a single uninformed designer is responsible for every one of these title treatments? Most likely not. But we continually see the same problems over and over, so apparently people are just copying each others mistakes. Ironic, wouldn’t you say? Given that these warnings are designed to prevent duplication?
Check out a couple more examples:
You might be saying to yourself, the way to solve this problem is to center the text. Well, that’s what this designer did…but they still overlooked the double space in line 3. Now, even though the text is centered, we’re still left with an odd overall shape—particularly on line 4—and an unsightly widow at the end. What’s a designer to do?
So, killing the double spaces and moving to left justification of the text should fix it, right? Not if you’re this guy. Nice rag you got there on the right, fella. But at least the double space issue is fixed on this one…or is it? Check out line 7. A double space within a sentence. That’s some good work, right there.
You’d think that between the U.S. Government, Interpol and Hollywood, they’d be able to come up with one good designer between them, but for the life of me, I can’t seem to find one well-designed warning screen. Granted, there are a few that aren’t horrible, but for the most part, all of these screens look like they were hastily put together by some low-level production assistant. I don’t have a sample of one, but there’s a good chance you’ve seen the ones from Paramount or FOX that repeat their logos in a pattern in the background with copy set on top of it using an ornate typeface in all caps and a in light color causing all sorts of legibility issues. Oh, the shame of it all…we do better than this.
If I had the time, I’d put together a library of warning screen templates at all of the relevant sizes and start plastering them all over the internet along with the source files in the hopes that someone would take notice and start using them. Based on how much they seem to be derived from one another, it may not take long to actually have an effect. That’s the optimist speaking. The pessimistic side of me would say, the so-called art for these slugs are already sitting in the libraries of post-production houses everywhere that the likelihood of change is slim. But then again, it gives me something to complain and write about, so I suppose that makes up for it all.
Ken @ January 27, 2008
This is old news to most, but definitely worth a mention on any blog talking about typography. Seven was one of the first great modern movie title treatments with some creepy-yet-tasteful typography. Designed by Kyle Cooper, a pioneer in motion graphics who founded Imaginary Forces in 1996 with Peter Frankfurt and Chip Houghton. Over the years, the firm has pumped out some of the most influential title treatments in history.
Here’s a quote from Cooper taken from Digital Arts Online:
I’ve never hired anyone that hasn’t come with a background in graphic design and type. There’s a lot of individuals that are fine animators, and are making things that move nicely but if you go through it frame-by-frame, a lot of the compositions are ugly.
And another taken from an interview on Thunder Chunky when asked about comparisons to Saul Bass:
There is no question that Saul Bass is the father of film titles but Paul Rand was the father of American graphic design. Mr. Rand and my teachers at Yale did not hold up Saul Bass as a great designer. I think Saul Bass’s contribution is obvious and I love the later work he did with Martin Scorcese but by Rand’s standards Bass was not a typographer. I prefer the Westinghouse logo to the Minolta logo. The thing with Rand also was that he did everything with his own hand and I do not think as far as the logos go that was the case with Saul Bass. But again I do not consider myself worthy to be compared with either of these men but I will press on and hopefully get better.
The Nine Inch Nails soundtrack and eerie imagery add to the creep factor. Here’s the full trailer courtesy of YouTube »
Ken @ January 1, 2008