Typography: Legibility, Context and Creativity

In essence, all letters are symbols that indicate a vocalization. When put together with other letters, they form words that have specific meaning and in turn, form language. For this reason, if the intent is for the words to be read and convey information to the viewer, it is vitally important for the designer of the letterforms to not stray too far from what is recognizably legible.

The idea of recognizable legibility deals with idea that the time period and current standards of normality play a huge role in what the view would perceive as easily readable. As explained by Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals in their book, Lettering & Type: Creating Letters & Designing Typefaces, "What was regarded as a clear and beautiful writing style for a twelfth-century Gothic manuscript is to today's readers as difficult to decipher as a tortuous graffiti script." They go on to say that what we, today, see as a clean, universally readable sans serif would have been viewed by nineteenth-century typographers as "crude and hard to read." For this reason, designers must always be conscious of the context in which their work will be viewed, and cater to it. After all, if a letter cannot be recognized as a letter and doesn't function as a letter, is it really a letter?

There is, as with most all aspects of design, a great deal of wiggle room for creativity in type design and lettering. This is because the inherent functionality of letters, as Willen and Strals note, comes, too, with a "surprisingly wide rage of emotions and associations -- everything from formality and professionalism to playfulness, sophistication, crudeness and beyond." These emotions and associations come from years of subjection to advertisers and branding. For example, the Giorgio Armoni logo is created with Didot Headline. Whenever  we see Didot in other uses, either consciously or subconsciously, we equate it to Armoni or at least the high fashion, high price, clean, tailored look of Armoni. The same can be said of the modern (or at least before the age of Facebook), playful look of Arial Rounded Bold in the myspace logo or the friendly, corporate neutrality of Helvetica in the failed Gap logo (as well as countless other, more successful logos).

Also coming into play here, are display or feature fonts that aim to create a specific look, feel or emotion, not from a well recognized usage of the font, but from creative elements that the font designer built into the characters. This can be seen in cracked and grunge fonts, graffiti fonts, hand-written fonts, etc. These the use of these fonts, however, is widely disputed among designers.
This reminds me of some of the interviews in the 2007 documentary Helvetica. Some designers, such as traditional Modernist Massimo Vignelli believe type should be the vessel for the message, not the message itself. “I don’t think that type should be expressive at all. I can write the word ‘dog’ with any typeface and it doesn’t have to look like a dog. But there are people that [think that] when they write ‘dog’ it should bark.”

Conversely, David Carson, former graphic designer of Ray Gun magazine, said, commenting on a number words typed in Helvetica, "That doesn't say 'caffeinated' - it just sits there. Nothing caffeinated about it."

As a designer in today's climate, I feel that there are opportunities to utilize all of the fonts available to us. Obviously, a grunge font wouldn't be appropriate for all clients, but either is a traditional Helvetica. We just need to be acutely aware of the client and their needs as well as the specifics of their audience — their background … their normal — and cater directly to that.


Sources: 
Lettering & Type: Creating Letters & Designing Typefaces by Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals
Helvetica (2007)