Typeface Spread

Julianna Bolivar
4 min readSep 27, 2021

September 27th

Notes on Gill Sans and spread sketches.
First picture is Minion Pro 10/12, indented vs not indented. Second is Minion 10/13. The added space is working I think.
Perpetua 10/11, indented vs not indented; pardon the orphan, I don’t think I’ll stick with Perpetua anyway, it’s a bit too wide and high contrast of a font for me.
Garamond 10/11, Garamond 10/12
Print-out to look at type size and setting. Asked for votes of the most readable one; Minion Pro 10/12 won.
Some simple spreads. Definitely not in love with this concept, it’s pretty dull.
Building on the last iterations. Colors inspired by the British flag.
Messing around. Don’t really like any of the iterations I’ve made.
My favorite of the iterations I’ve made. But I don’t know if the pigeon in the middle is dead or just napping…

September 28th

Latest version after crit from Yoshi and drawings by Vicki; reduce size of “The British Helvetica,” add “Gill Sans” somewhere, move image so it isn’t interrupting the text, make body copy more approachable to read, take off bar and background texture. Previously had image in middle to break up the text and avoid being too “responsible,” but my narrative should actually be together here instead of “pick and choose” like the poster.
References for letter anatomy.
Illustrator color explorations… also included the blue from first iteration. I chose these letters because they are mentioned in my text and each show a unique characteristic of Gill Sans.

September 29th

Edited out the birds inside the sign.
Version before office hours. Definitely need to revise proportions, but at least I like my elements. Need to figure out typesetting; I don’t like all my text together since my essay is long, so I’ll need to decide how to make them a little different from each other.
Lighter blue on A, eyedropped from stickers on pole (Yoshi’s suggestion). It’s a subtle change but I do think it matches the spread more like that.
Edited out the white stickers per Yoshi’s suggestion, it looks much better now that the bottom part of the pole isn’t blending in with the background.
Moving body copy around page; trying to settle on how to link all the text.
Switching up image and threading of text.
Later aligned header and subheader in the middle because previously it didn’t look aligned at all though it was aligned with the margin.
I think I’ll print this second version because with the image first, it sort of stops your eye. I think in the second version you have more ability to let your eye move around and read the narrative.

I’m definitely not satisfied with my work. I know I need more iterations, I know I’m missing something, I just can’t execute more than this right now. This project has left me feeling really inadequate. I feel like I don’t have enough ideas and that’s why I stick with a concept early on. I don’t explore enough and I don’t experiment enough because I don’t know how to. I don’t know how to fix that other than practice.

October 17th

Made some changes in type and de-emphasized “Gill Sans.” InDesign gave me issues with color and was very uncooperative. I don’t like how blue it is. In print it looks more neutral.

Version that was turned in for class.
Final final version, revised after completing the animation!

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