Bad

This is a ball that my mom bought on amazon because she thought it might be fun. It is a ball that shocks you after a certain amount of time when your hand is on those little metal contact points and it is meant to be used to play hot potato. Not only is the packaging design absolutely awful, the little bit of typography on the box is just as bad. The text at the bottom left of the box is not necessarily too bad, but it is not really good either. The placement of it does not make much sense to me. Having it be at the bottom left of the packaging makes it seem like secondary information on a package despite it being the most important text on the box. Also the text “Ball” being larger than the text above it despite it being no more important does not make sense either. Thankfully, its placed in a way that does not interfere with the opening tab right next to it. The company logo at the top right is placed fine and it is legible, but its design does not make sense either. It looks like text that just had some random modifications that don’t reflect the name at all. The “h” being cut off by the “i” and then having the “i” be a different color than the rest of the text feels very random. The “T” in “Top” curving around the “o” and the random cut on the “p.” These design choices don’t feel intentional, but instead feel like random design choices to make a slightly more interesting logo despite it not affecting meaning at all.

For my example of good typography I found a really big roll of aluminum foil in the pantry of my house. Overall, the design is very simple but it works extremely well. All of the colors contrast really nicely with each other and because of that the text is very easy to see and read. The font is very nice choice for this product as well. Having a heavy and bold sans-serif font that feels very sturdy and strong helps to reinforce that idea that this foil is strong. One other thing that helps reinforce the idea of strength is that the words “HEAVY DUTY” are much larger than most of the other text on the design. Having those words larger than the rest draws more attention to them to ensure that one of the first things that people see when they look at this design is how strong this foil is. The only other text that draws more attention is the green “500ft.” I am not sure if it is good that the green text draws more attention than the “HEAVY DUTY,” but it still helps to develop the idea of big and strong because the text emphasizes the sheer quantity of foil in this pack. The white text on the green background is smaller and has lower contrast than the larger text below it which is good because it is less important information so it is good that it comes after the other text in the visual hierarchy. The only thing I do not really like about this design is the blue circle and text in the top right. Everything else is very clean with straight lines but this has slanted text and is in a circle which I do not think reinforces the overall package design.

This is some packaging from a spool of yarn I got from Walmart that I believe could use some work with the typography. Overall, I think that the design of this packaging is extremely nice and very appealing and most of the typography is done really well, but there are a few things that could be changed to help elevate it the next level. I think with how cluttered the background is, the some of the words and letters can get a bit lost. The font that the packaging uses works really well with the design and feel of the design. Parts of the word “HOMETOWN” can blend in with each other and the background when looking at it at a glance though. The W and the N at the end can start to blend together and can be hard to read at a glance. When you have time to really look at and study the design, these are not big issues. However, when someone is looking through an aisle at the store glancing at different packaging, it can be fairly hard to read. Some of the letter spacing is also inconsistent. Specifically the distance between the M and E is much larger than other letters like the space between the E and T, or the T and O. Other than that the only things I could find wrong with this packaging is the little icons at the bottom showing the number of rolls someone would need for different projects. The contrast between the background and that area in general is pretty minimal which can make it hard to see for some people. Other than that, I think that the packaging was really nice.