Type Transformations
Understanding typographic hierarchy in visual communication design.
Type plays a vital role in visual communication design. During my Semester I at National Institute Of Design, students were asked to redesign a local brand’s product label to develop an understanding on typographic hierarchy. I chose to work on Thomsons bakery’s sandwich bread label. Thomson’s bakery is a 54 year old, family-owned business situated in a bustling street of Cox Town, known for its breads and plum cakes.
The bread loaves at Thomson’s Bakery are packed in thin transparent covers accompanied with a sheet of paper that contained information about the bread and the bakery.
Issues related to font sizes, spacing, consistency and alignment were listed down and worked on through multiple explorations. #TypeNerdAlert
- Poor legibility due to an increase in kerning
- Unnecessary capitalisation of letters
- High contrast in font sizes for related textual content
- Reduced spacing between unrelated categories of information
- Spacing after commas and hyphens
- Repetitive information
The label lacked breathing space and the content was all over. The next step was to categorise the information in label. Communicating the major selling points of the bakery could help gain the the trust of the customers and encourage buying local.
The redesigned label retains the personality of the 54 year old bakery. The information on the label was laid out in a serif font along with strong and bold patterns for highlighting specific pieces of information. The label is redesigned in black as this might help reducing the cost in printing. The date of expiry and the price of the bread were placed above the rest of the details as these were one of the major aspects a customer looks at while buying a bread loaf.
This exercise helped gain an understanding on how appropriate font sizes, spacing and alignment can bring a major shift in the perception of information, brand value and design.
Thanks for reading. I’m Sasha Cherian, a student at National Institute Of Design, Bangalore, India, learning about information design. If you found this interesting, give it a👏 and let me know what you think about the type transformation in the comments below.
