Sep 9, 2015

The majority of the information of the web is written language. So for a UI designer, understanding the fundamentals of typography is pretty important.

Project Outline

I’m still hanging in there at The Iron Yard, and I’m currently working on an assignment to redesign the website of a local restaurant. NOTE: This is purely a learning exercise, just for fun. I’ve chosen Easy Tiger, a bake shop / beer garden on 6th Street. It’s one of my favorite places in Austin, so it gives me a good excuse to spend a little more time there. You know, for research. It should be a fun project, and I’m pretty excited to share some of my process as I walk through it.

Research

I started by taking a page out of Jason Santa Maria’s book, On Web Typography, and used a word list. Luckily I had already created one as part of the assignment. Some of the words that stood out to me were traditional, vintage, heritage, and hand-crafted. At Easy Tiger all of their baked goods and the majority of their provisions are made by hand, in-house. They make things the old way, the traditional way. Even their space has a sort of weathered and worn appeal, as if it has been there for ages (it hasn’t). So it only makes sense for any visuals representing the restaurant to have a sort of rustic, distressed (but not grungy) feel.

Headings

I spent a lot of time looking at humanist typefaces, because I wanted to convey a sort of down-to-earth feeling. I’m drawn to humanist typefaces because of their simplicity. But I ended up with a bunch of pretty bland, safe choices. After some encouragement I decided to try something different. So I did some research and chose Alegreya, a serif typeface originally intended for literature. It’s a decided nod to calligraphic lettering, but has a very contemporary feel. One of the best things about it is that it has a true italic, and comes in several weights. I chose a bold weight for the headings and was surprised at how well they give the impression of a pub type atmosphere.

Body Copy

I paired the serif type of my headings with a round sans-serif. Lato is a sturdy geometric typeface with a warm feel to it. Its simplicity makes it friendly and inviting, which works well for a local bake shop and beer garden where people flock to socialize, play ping pong and relax. I think the pairing of Alegreya and Lato is a pretty solid one. They both give a sense of stability, but friendliness. Each is clean and elegant in its own way, with a certain amount of character. (See what I did there?)

In Summary

At the end of the day, I realize I could have pushed myself more on this assignment. I’d say my main takeaway from this excercise is knowing that type explorations is not the time to play it safe. It’s the time to have fun, be bold, make some crazy choices; you can always rein them in later. This is something that’s hard for me to do, because I fear failure. And even though I know the importance of “failing forward,” it is a daily struggle to put it into practice. When it comes down to it, though, I want to make things that work well and look good. I want to stop playing it safe. I want to start taking more risks.