food products

The last food products start with this, which I found at Walmart looking for a bad example, and instead found a good example of typography (it’s a lot harder to find something bad than I thought). This product in particular stood out to me from the rest of the “good” typography examples initially because of the unique case of the letter “U.” They use a smiley face as the U, which in itself adds a lot of visual interest to the product to distinguish itself from the other products a bit. But they stop that uniqueness there at the branding of the product, it’s now time for the rest of the information to come across. Though that’s not to say that there isn’t room to still be creative with how to present the text. For example, the next two instances of text, “Fig Bar” and “10 Twin Packs” use a surrounding box that inverts the foreground and background colors for the text and the box. In a way, this inverted appearance can resemble a fig bar, the box being the bar and the text being the filling. It’s a creative way to present the text and adds more visual interest without being disruptive to the product as it uses the same two colors in the background and in the text. Next they indicate the flavor of Raspberry clearly after this series of inverted colors. It’s a slightly smaller type size than the rest of the previous text, but by breaking the visual flow from “regular” to inverted and back to regular, that switch back to regular can add a form of visual emphasis.

I found this around the house looking for a bad example and when I turned this container around I was immediately greeted with an explosion of typefaces.

I count at least 4 different typefaces, so there can be more than what I counted, but the only reason why I wasn’t completely sure is that each instance of text feels like a different typeface in general. Although some typefaces might be the same like “KILLS MOST GERMS AND BACTERIA” and “SANITIZING WIPES,” because of a difference in type size they give the illusion of two different typefaces at a glance.

Though the main reason this product was bad typography to me is the disruption to visual hierarchy. Each line of text is visually different and attempts to emphasize something different with each one. But the effect that ends up occurring is that when everything tries to be different, nothing is different. Each line of text feels independent from one another so there’s no consistency or harmony. Since there isn’t any consistent typeface being used as a standard, it’s hard to say that any of these words are truly emphasized meaningfully.

When attempting to utilize different typefaces, the choice is to either have very minimal changes or have very dramatic ones, but this product somehow feels as if it does both. There’s enough minimal changes for the viewer to notice something different but also annoy them and also lots of drastic changes that ultimately doesn’t contribute to the product meaningfully.

On the flip side, also found at Walmart, is the final food product than is an example of typography I’d consider bad. If we take the previous example, it only uses two colors yet it kept itself interesting with the switch up of using an inverted color palette for the text. This bag of chips however, isn’t promoting many forms of visual interest. The most interesting and emphasized piece of text on here is the brand itself, a giant “KETTLE” followed by the word “Brand” just to make sure the viewer gets the point. Aside from that, each piece of text after comes in varying sizes that isn’t all that noticeable and slightly irritating. “Brand” is the same size as or perhaps slightly smaller than “Potato Chips,” “Potato Chips” is the same size as “Backyard” which is smaller than “Barbeque” but larger than “great taste... naturally.” The most emphasis they attempted to put into this product was varying degrees of size changes, none of which really doing anything. Along with the text on the product being the same color, everything feels visually stale. The biggest change I see they did is go from a brown to a brighter orange background, which personally still hasn’t done anything for the visual hierarchy. This product could take a few pointers from the previous example and try inverting the foreground and background for the text with the orange background, which possibly creates some visual interest very easily.

Surprise, it’s another product that was found at the bar mentioned in the previous weeks (I took a decent amount of photos). 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.