menus, branding, advertisments, etc.

This was also found at the same local bar and also a good example of typography.

It’s a simple sans serif typeface that’s also quite a thick font size, which is usually a good way to promote legibility. The tracking looks tight but there’s enough space so that the letters don’t touch, which promotes a very structural feeling to the text. A unique or interesting design choice they had was to cut the left arm of the Y a bit in Funky to accommodate for the right arm of the K. This adds a bit more visual interest to the piece without sacrificing legibility and readability. On another note, I also think this was done to help keep a centered alignment for visual balance for the product.

The other thing of note is the word Brewery that’s diagonal following the stroke of the A. For similar reasons as before, it’s visually interesting and also helps keep a visual balance to the product. Had they chosen to have the word in a different way, the piece would feel imbalanced and distracting. If Brewery was removed all together, the alignment of text would no longer be truly centered and I’m not exactly sure if Buddha would be big enough to compensate for the missing space so they would have to either increase tracking or make the type size bigger, both of which would introduce a visual discrepancy.

Surprise, it’s another product that was found at the bar mentioned in the previous weeks (I took a decent amount of photos), but it’s the last example here, and yet again it’s another good example of typography to me.

There is largely one thing that stands out to me that could make it bad and that’d be the kerning used between the letters of K, E N in Kentucky is rather tight compared to the spacing of the rest of the letters in the word, I can’t really guess as to if that was an intentional design choice or not, but it is the most inconsistent thing that is on this product.

That being said, everything else on the product is consistent in regards to spacing, such as the words BOURBON BARREL. The layout is made so that the viewer is led through the product smoothly. The choice of a thick, bold typeface with serifs is sturdy which helps visually reinforce the impressions that the wood behind it and the product of ale give off, hard sturdy alcohol.

One of the last things about this product is that the typeface is the same with the first two instances of text, but is changed drastically for the last word of Ale. The typeface Ale uses completely forgoes the serifs in exchange for long, extenuated swashes and a larger type size. This choice emphasizes that the main and most important part of this barrel cap is the ale it holds, with the swashes seemingly implies that it is also refined and eloquent.

These are frozen Chicken Bites that you can find at Sam’s Club. This is an example of good typography.

The main appeal of this product is the consistency of the viewing experience, in essence I think I count two different typefaces across this product, the sans serif typeface and the cursive typeface. The words “Chicken Bites” are the only words that are in the cursive typeface and therefore the most visually different typeface compared to the rest of the words on this product. It’s also one of the biggest sized words on the product, that alongside the typeface having a bolded aesthetic to it gives it a great visual emphasis which tells us what exactly this product is very quickly.

The sans serif typefaces are smaller in comparison but they still tell key information. Sans serif fonts are by nature more visually modern, throughout each letter they do not really go any thicker or thinner. That in tandem with the consistent tracking and leading of the whole product, leads to a visually pleasing and consistent viewing experience.

The choice of color for the letters also lends itself to having simple but eye-catching contrast. Each word is contrasted well, white letters on a black background, black on white, red on white, white on red, these allow the words to pop out more. Interestingly enough though, there’s not any black on red or red on black, which leads me to believe that the designers of this product were aware that a dominant color on a dominant color would make the viewing experience harsher to some degree.

This is a bottle of wine or whatever alcoholic beverage that my parents have. For this particular bottle, there’s many examples of good, readable typography, but the one thing that’ll make me call this bottle a bad example of typography is the layout they chose in the lower half of the bottle.

We’ve got a serif typeface present here at the top with Taylor and New York, which gives a more eccentric feel to the product. Followed up by a sans serif typeface with Port, most likely indicating the flavor or version of this beverage. So far, the layout and appearance is fine, the previous words are spaced and positioned enough to where they are centrally aligned and take up an equal amount of space. But where the layout starts dropping in consistency is this short paragraph below “Port.”

To accommodate for the graphic and the centrally aligned visuals, they decided to split the text. The first line is kept whole, but the remaining 3 lines of text are split in half. While we can bridge the gap between and read all of the text as usual from left to right, it’s just as easy to be able to read the split off text as their own section. I feel that if it’s even a possibility to read it like so and break how you read it, it’s not a good typographic choice.

The bottle does end up being visually interesting with these choices and they even could’ve tried to be ambitiously creative with the word choice to where having the split text could make sense both on its own and combined, but ultimately ends up being a fractured reading experience.