Good Example

This is a bottle of vanilla extract that I also found sitting in the kitchen where I work. All the fonts used in this design are in all uppercase lettering, also known as titling fonts. While there are multiple different font faces being used together here, they are mostly all coming from the same font family, sans serif, so this designer wanted to keep the typography pretty simplistic so the viewer was able to focus easily. There is one font that is outside of the sans serif family, but it is contained and fits perfectly with the rest of the design elements, in an almost italic serif uppercase font style. My picture is a little blurry so I apologize but the font faces on this bottle are definitely sharp and simplistic, pulling a certain kind of audience in. This brand of vanilla extract is called MAGNOLIA STAR. This is ironic, as this is the first example I have covered that has any dingbats at all, and the dingbat we have happens to be a star, the perfect element that this company could have included in their typographical design. Dingbats are used to show a pictographic element that uses textual elements to draw in the viewer, which is perfectly flowing in this design. The kerining of the characters are also made to flow easily for the viewer’s sight. The leading within the design is also flowing easily, as it is not just even, but on the perfect design technique of spacing, as the leading makes the words almost looks like they are layers of the flower on the bottle, pulling you back in to the company name.

This is a bottle of salsa I found in the kitchen at my work place. This main font. which reads MEDIUM SALSA is 2 different font faces, which both of them cannot seem to pick what kind of font it wants to be. When I first saw the word MEDIUM I for sure thought that is was a sans serif font. However, when I looked closer there seemed to be the tiniest strokes of serifs on the letterforms, which threw me off because I could not see that unless the bottle was right by my face. I also noticed all the lines for design elements, which is nice for flow of packaging but the word SALSA has the same exact lines as an inner stroke of the typeface. While I see that the designer was trying to carry out a subject of design, this distracts and blends the word SALSA into the background and does not make for an efficient design aspect overall. The text from the company “Member’s Mark” and the word MEDIUM are way too similar typefaces. They are not the same typeface, which would be fine in design, but they barely have a difference occurring. We learned in this week’s content notes that multiple family mixes are okay, but if they are “too close for comfort” then the typefaces can provide a counterpart for one another which ends up distracting the viewers from the objective. I think that the designer would benefit from adding a little more contrast between the top 2 fonts and by cancelling out the distracting element of the lines within the main font.