This exercise had two parts to it. Part one asked me to go through my digital software and sort all of the fonts I had available to me into five categories: serif, sans-serif, decorative, script, and fixed-width. I was then asked to create a sample book featuring all of the typefaces, something I could easily refer back to in future when selecting fonts for my work. Part two was putting this sample book into use, identifying suitable fonts for four different briefs and trying them out in practice. I was also asked to make notes on how changing these fonts changed the feeling of each mockup.
To start with, I decided to do some brief research into existing sample books, and I went straight to Behance for this. Behance is a great website for seeing other designers’ projects and work, and I found five sample books that I really enjoyed the feeling of. They all explored one typeface and its qualities, uses, and complementing typefaces, in a very creative and illustrative way. The five typefaces are Playfair Display, Dalloway, Aeonik Pro, Bodoni, and Warnock Pro. This approach is slightly different to what I wanted to do for my own sample book, as I would be demonstrating many different typefaces at once, but it did help as a starting point to get me thinking about what I needed to show throughout my book.
I wasn’t aiming to create something print-perfect or for my portfolio, I wanted something that was for me – something I enjoyed looking at, but that was ultimately very functional. A book I could easily flip through and pay attention to the typefaces within and how I would apply them in the project I was working on. I decided I would display each typeface including variants on a white page, with black text, and have a paragraph of dummy text featured too, so I could see the font in various uses. I then began to look at the fonts I had available to me.
My digital work is in a bit of limbo currently – split between Procreate on my iPad and Adobe Suite on my laptop. I am enjoying exploring the Adobe Suite and what it offers, but I think I will always come back to Procreate for more illustrative work. Having access to my Apple Pencil is a game-changer for drawing, compared to a mouse on my laptop! The Adobe Suite subscription gives me access to Adobe Fonts, which I have used very briefly but never really gone through completely. I took this opportunity to download every font that was appealing to me from the site, ensuring I got a wide range of both serif and sans options.
One difficulty here is that the fonts I have available in Procreate are different to the fonts available in the Adobe Suite. Some of these are downloaded from 1001fonts, and I could download them to my laptop too. But some are simply unavailable on my laptop without purchasing, and vice versa. I briefly considered making two sample books – one for Photoshop and one for Procreate – but quickly realised the Procreate sample book would be a side project for revisiting later. It was simply too much work!
Initially, I thought it would be nice to have a printed copy of this book to hand, so I referenced available printing services to decide the size of the book. I wanted a landscape format and eventually settled on A5. I then began designing a cover for my book. I had this idea to use a mix of different typefaces to illustrate the purpose of the book, and named it ‘My little sample book’. I found choosing colours difficult. I have my go-to colour palettes available in Procreate, and there’s a huge amount of options for colour picking and matching within the app. I don’t quite understand Photoshop’s colour pickers just yet, and it took a while to find something I felt good with. I ended up importing one of my favourite colour palettes from Procreate and tweaking it a little until it looked good.
I added ‘The Photoshop Edition’ as a little bit of encouragement for me to make ‘The Procreate Edition’ later down the line, and applied a lovely texture to the whole piece to finish it up. I love this grainy, messy, painterly feeling to the texture. Before moving on, I removed all text and graphics, leaving behind the texture and background colour, and added some text along the bottom. This became the back cover.
I then started creating each introduction page – describing the category of fonts within the next chapter and what they are used for. I began with serifs, then modelled each page on this. I used the same style as the cover, this time featuring only that category of fonts, and Futura as an accent font. I kept the same colour scheme and used the same texture as on the cover to tie it all together. I like how all of these pages turned out and how the book feels – I can see my vintage inspiration coming through in all of these designs and I definitely enjoy looking at them!
Now I had to begin displaying all of my typefaces. This was a massive task. I could have spent weeks on this, but as I have limited time to complete this unit, I had to work fast. I deleted layers once I was satisfied with how a typeface was presented so that my laptop wouldn’t slow down or overheat, and tried to not be too precious about details. This was also hard, as I am very much a perfectionist, and I was acutely aware this was not my best work. Halfway through I became very aware that this was the wrong software to be using, too, and I would’ve had a much easier time in InDesign.
I had hundreds of fonts to work through, so I just had to keep reminding myself that this was just for me to look at. It’s just for me to reference, to pick typefaces from, and to use as an individual. I do not need each page to be perfect, I just need each page to be functional and work for the purpose required. This was helpful and pulled me out of a lot of stressful scenarios throughout this process.
Initially, I allocated three days for this exercise, which was a major underestimation. I don’t think I was aware of how many fonts I had available to me, and how much work it would take to lay them all out. I also had a lot of problems to solve as I worked, and couldn’t quite follow the same format for every font as I had initially planned. At first, I was displaying the typeface name and all variations in 60pt, with a paragraph of dummy text alongside at 24pt. I felt it was important to maintain this throughout the book so that typefaces could be equally compared, but it just wasn’t possible. I made very slight changes – 22pt or 58pt for the text and headers – to accommodate varying typeface sizes, widths, and idiosyncrasies.
I also had to play around with the leading quite a bit and adjust the layout of each page for almost every new typeface. Those with a lot of variations were particularly tricky to navigate. It took a while for me to find quicker solutions for the issues I was encountering, but I think towards the middle of the process I was in a good flow as I’d already encountered almost all of the possible issues. I also made sure to consider how the book would be laid out for print and how to utilise each page with this in mind. This is another way using InDesign would have helped a lot more than Photoshop, and I intend to use it for any layouts I have to create in future.
Once I had finished laying out each font, I used Adobe Acrobat to piece it together to make a PDF. This was tricky, as I had to make sure each typeface was together and the flow of the book made sense, and when uploading the pages they were organised completely randomly. It was satisfying seeing it all coming together, however, and I love how the final PDF looks. I do feel a sense of disappointment knowing I could do better, and I can see so many places I could improve the layout, but I have to keep reminding myself that this is just for me to reference, and I can do it again if I want it to look perfect some other time.
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Once my PDF was complete, I moved on to the second part of the exercise. I started by reading over each of the four briefs and annotating the unit guide to indicate what category of font I believed would be suitable for each, and where potential research was needed. I began with the church advertisement brief as I felt this would be the easiest and a good introduction to this part of the exercise.
Originally I wrote ‘sans serif variable’ as the font that would be suitable for this brief, but when I looked through my PDF I realised several decorative fonts would work perfectly. I noted down Harrington, Cooper, Lust, and Bely to try out, then opened up an A6 document in Photoshop. I tried to focus purely on font combinations and layouts, rather than thinking about colours, images, and embellishments, and tried out several different combinations. I used the chosen decorative fonts to create an eye-catching headline, and Corbel and Futura as complementary body text.
Changing the headline font especially made a huge difference to how the advert looked. I think my favourite one is Cooper Black paired with Corbel. I’m not sure if the layout of this is very good, definitely could use more work, but the fonts look lovely and suitable for the context. I wanted a bold and decorative font for this setting as the advert is seeking creative people, I felt ‘artistic flourish’ needed emphasis with the font choice.
Next, I began working on the boys club poster. I decided to use a decorative font again here for the heading, and a serif font for the body text. Whilst looking through the PDF, I selected Mikrobe, Sketchnote, Goudy, Mr. Eaves, and Grenadine for these purposes. I then began mocking up a poster and trying out different layouts and font combinations in Photoshop.
I used filled rectangles here to indicate where potential images would go. I think one of the first two – where I used Mikrobe as a header with Mr. Eaves as body text, and Sketchnote as both the header and body – is most effective here. I really like how Mr. Eaves complements Mikrobe, and I feel Mikrobe fits the context well and feels eye-catching and fun. Using Sketchnote’s different font options for both the header and body text feels very cohesive and again eye-catching and fun, though my personal opinion on the body text is that it’s a bit dated as a typeface.
I moved on to the magazine page next. I began with some research as I don’t feel overly familiar with this genre of magazine, and I looked mostly at the Glamour website. Most articles used bold decorative serif headers, and unique – though easier to read – serif typefaces for their body text. With this in mind, I revisited the PDF and chose a wide range of options: Bely, Book Antiqua, Constantia, and Californian FB for the body text, and Ivy Mode, Mostra Nuova, Lust, Elephant, Bely, and Blenny for the headline.
I also selected an image from Unsplash to work around for this layout, as I had an image in my head of the text flowing around it, and this would’ve been hard to achieve with just a rectangle to stand in. I edited and positioned the image to start with, then began playing around with different text layouts and typefaces.
I enjoyed this brief and felt like my explorations were mostly very effective. Bely or Californian FB were my favourite body text options, and I felt they paired nicely with Ivy Mode and Lust as the headers. It was also really fun being able to explore the different formatting options for the type and trying to fit it around the image I chose. I feel really good about how these look!
The final brief was a bit tricky for me. I felt the provided copy was a bit excessive, and the idea of making a club night poster as an engagement party invitation was bemusing. I also don’t really have a strong sense of what club night posters look like, so I began with research. I struggled to find much to reference, but I started to build a basic idea of the kind of typefaces used. I picked out Colonna MT, Brim Narrow, Magneto, Mostra Nuova, BC Ludva, Condor, and Sinter from the PDF, and began playing with the layout and font options.
I absolutely think the final one is the most effective – using Magneto as a decorative header and Condor as the body text. They work really well together in this context and I feel like I’ve gotten the ‘club night’ vibe nailed down. I think this one was especially hard to create when focusing solely on type and not colour, imagery, graphics etc. Club night posters looked very busy and full of colour, so these all feel a bit bland. I coloured the ampersand in yellow to show that it was behind the names, and I think this addition is effective.
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I had more fun identifying fonts for these briefs than I anticipated, and it has shown me immediately how useful and effective my sample book is! Seeing everything laid out like this – even digitally – is immensely helpful to compare how fonts function in different contexts. I’m really glad I added the dummy text paragraphs too, I used these a lot when selecting body texts. I also feel like I’m getting a stronger idea of how fonts work together and how to use them effectively. Despite feeling like my sample book is on the rough side, I learned a lot about my process and how to utilise different software – I will definitely be exploring InDesign in the future for editorial work.
This was a long and tricky exercise, but I am really happy that I produced some meaningful and useful work from it. I look forward to seeing how I use my sample book PDF for future exercises, and potentially reworking it later down the line!
Learning Log 