A VERY Interesting Class

We had a class this morning with Dougal Muir, who will be our external examiner of our final projects.

He came in for an Art Direction class, and we got a really good chance to sit and chat about what he will be looking for in our projects when we present to him in one month. We talked a lot about typography -and for those of you who have not yet seen the post on the vfs blog vfs blog -I highly suggest you read the comments and form your own opinion if you have seen the film. What’s your take on Helvetica? But on to what we discussed today..

Dougal was very open and vocal about his take on typography today. He says that typography from centuries ago is becoming less and less relevant. He also says that Helvetica was designed not to have a personality so that the true meanings of the words would have the most emphasis. It is safe to say that Dougal belives we should be influenced by things, and then move on. He compared it to fashion from the ’60s, when he asked if any of us were wearing something from that decade. ..No, no none of us were. Dougal stressed the importance of young designers stepping away from their font libraries, and the mindless, numbness of going through one by one looking for something that perfect font. He is very much about the typography having a personality, as well as a brand should have a personality.

I definitely agree with his thoughts on how type should have a relevance to it’s use.. He used an example that when creating a brand for women that was supposed to be about nature -it would not be appropriate to be using a font like Futura. This isn’t to say that we should not be using Futura -but to be using it where it is appropriate to be used.. Because Futura is a very modernistic, German typeface - it would not seemsuit the application to a female, light, lovely, au natural brand. I was really happy that he provided us with names of some foundries that are doing new typography. Places like veer.com, ourtype.be, and newstoday.com.

Anyways, it was a great class to have, not only to hear his standpoint typography, but also to get a sense of who he is and what we can expect for next month during our reviews. I really hope that other classes after us will get this chance. I would do a further review on the class.. but as Busse reminded me during our last meeting - I have lots of work to get done! It’s crunch time!