Bad

This was a design on a vehicle for The Ultimate Handyman. If they truly were the ultimate handyman then they should probably focus a bit more on the design of their vehicle. I know that the picture is blurry, but it is the only one I was able to get because the light turned green and I had to start driving. The text that says “The Ultimate Handyman” is ok. The contrast is fine and it is fairly easy to read from a slight distance. However, I am a little confused as to why the “The” is slanted though. I suppose it does add a bit of interest to the design but it also does not really add anything else. Although you can not really read it through the picture, the thin text on the right door says “like us on Facebook” and it was written with a more decorative and very thin font. The choice of font there was awful because you could barely read it when it was close to you and stopped. Good luck to anyone trying to read it when it is moving though. Aside from those issues, the design had absolutely no voice. Just like my last example of bad typography with the truck. Maybe if they added some more typeface variety that actually works for the design or added some color or a more interesting design then it could have more of a voice. However, since the overall design is very simple, it does not really have much of a voice.

My sister got me this book about baking for my last birthday because she knows that I like to bake occasionally. Overall, I think that the cover of this book has very nice typography that really compliment the theme of the book. Overall, the contrast of all of the text on the cover is great. Each word has enough contrast against the background so that everything is easily legible. I really like that part about the typography because I believe that it is a really nice example of text still being legible over a busy background. I see too often text be completely unreadable when it is over busy backgrounds or images, so it is nice that this example was done well. I also really like the main font that the designer chose. The sans serif font of the text “Bread Baking” is very simple and it also has nice soft edges that help reflect the soft nature of bread. The text below it that says “for Beginners” is also in a fairly nice font. It is easily readable and compliments the font above it fairly well. The decorative nature of it also has a nice rustic and homely feel which matches the rustic theme of the book’s design. The colors chosen for the text also match with the content in the book. The text is cream and a soft yellow, which are not only nice to look at, but are also the primary colors of bread. Overall, the design aspects of the book and the typographic choices match really well to create a visually appealing and coherent design.

Over spring break I stayed at a beach house with some of my friends and while I was there I saw this can koozie and noticed the awful typography on it. I mean congrats to Marguerite and Brad, but man is this typography bad. Overall, the layout of it is not the worst. It is extremely bland with no voice whatsoever, but it definitely could be worse. One of the worst things about this is the readability. I mean whoever thought that pink text over a camo background was a good idea should probably not be designing much else. It might have had better readability when it was originally printed, but currently, the text is so faded it makes it extremely hard to read and the camo only makes the situation worse. This is most noticeable with the date at the bottom where it says “5, 2006.” The first time I looked at it took me a few seconds to read the date even though I was holding it inches away from my face. The colors chosen for the design are also really bad. The hot pink text does not compliment the green and brown at all. The choice of font is also a questionable choice. I do like how most of it is fairly bold which should help with readability in theory, but not much can really be done to salvage this design. This font also lends itself to having really thin bowls in most of the letter, like the B or d, which is a detriment to the readability of the design.