C Studio Project Three
Week One
Through this spread and the video project associated with it, I got to know a typeface that I had never heard of before, but actually look forward to using in the future! I was assigned Chaparral, and much of the first week was spent doing research on the typeface- its history, usage, characteristics alone and juxtaposed with other typefaces. As I became more familiar with Chaparral and type terminology, I expanded on my narrative, but my first draft tried to cover a broader perspective. Influenced by Garamond’s 16th century Roman book typefaces and 19th century slab serifs, Chaparral was the last typeface ever released by Carol Twombly, famed designer under Adobe. Designed in the last years of the 90’s and released in the new 21st century, it’s a true hybrid; curved but angular, Roman yet slab, professional and also playful, Chaparral defies expectations and delivers welcoming and legible text.
I found a few articles online suggesting type pairings for Chaparral, but ultimately decided to just trust my own judgment by exploring my options within different pairings, type size, and leading on InDesign. I printed out several variations for each and pinned them up on the wall in studio, viewing them from different distances and slowly ruling out combinations that I felt were less effective. I chose Minion Pro at 10/14 for its readability and harmony with my typeface.
Having printed out the grid template Vicki gave us, I began to play around with different spread layouts to get a sense of how I would distribute text and visual elements. These early iterations were useful in coming up with quick and rough iterations I could refine digitally. Once I actually shifted from sketches to InDesign, my exploration felt more purposeful. Early images focused on a very literal interpretation of my typeface (the biome it references in its name), and our first crit made me realize that the colors and imagery in these didn’t quite speak to the energy and quirkiness that I had first observed in my typeface. It was also harder to convey the more abstract experience of Chaparral through photos of recognizable landscapes.
Week Two
I went back with the realization that I needed to reframe my spread around the typeface itself, and that I needed to communicate the way that it “felt” through a more expressive manner. During the crit, I had jotted down some edits to keep in mind- being mindful of how tabs and spacing impact the rag, significance of white space and breathing room, and a stronger attempt at unifying the two pages of the spread. I wasn’t very satisfied with my current iteration, but I decided to let it sit for a while so I could shift my attention over to the video and see how that might affect my representation of Chaparral.
Week Three
I think that putting the spreads aside for a while was definitely a good idea, because I came back from my video with a fresh perspective on the personality and visual voice of my typeface. I took the new color palette and overall playfulness from my video as foundations for my new explorations of spread, resulting in iterations that felt truer to Chaparral.
My final spread on Thursday tried to bring together all of the characteristics of my typeface, such as the contrast between curves and angles, the playfulness, and the visual motifs from my video through the juxtaposition of individual character glyphs and the circular highlights of terminals. The large letters begin to bridge the divide between the two pages. I felt like this was a big step from my original designs, but I wanted to continue refining it. The paler text boxes made my text feel a little too cramped and hard to read, which felt too inaccessible compared to the message I was trying to convey about Chaparral.
In my last set of revisions, I loosened up the spread by sticking with a white background and matching text boxes on the left page. I wanted the text to feel approachable, and I think this is a better representation of that. I got rid of as the ligature because it drew too much immediate attention to that one spot of tension on the left page, while adding page numbers and horizontal lines to echo the harmony of a magazine spread.