Typography everywhere!

I went out shooting photographs of type in different places; magazines, store fronts, products, even on cars. I came away with two observations, that type is used in two main areas: advertising and information graphics.

If advertising, designers seem to have a lot more freedom with their fonts adding 'extra' design to their type to add more emphasis to the emotion they are conveying. For example, in the image below the designer has used a very strong, bold, typeface and put crack marks through it to add to the rugged, street value of the ad.

If typefaces are used for information graphics like magazine mastheads or signs then it seems they are used just as is with very little alteration, like this example of a pedestrian crossing sign. The instruction has to be clear therefore there is no clutter.

It does seem much of the advertising out there is so cluttered and busy. It's hard to land on anything! I found this ad and liked the simplicity of it:

I'm interested in making the kind of type that by treating it a certain way, you can convey more of a feeling than by just writing the word out in plain black and white text. The text becomes art.

This animation was used at the Offf conference in Lisbon last year. The whole image is very fluid and very motivating. It somehow makes me want to get out of my seat and create!