OUGD503 - Roses Awards - Nonversation - Social Media and Typefaces

Shortly after Twitter changed its profile design in early 2014, they changed the font from Helvetica Neue to Gotham because of it's popularity on the internet. It didn't go down very well with Twitter users, and has since been changed back. It shows how people notice the small things, and they reacted in various ways.

Tweets such as these and the fact that Twitter felt the need to return to Helvetica Neue suggests that there's a strong connection between the Twitter user base and Helvetica Neue, which is odd given how the font is so commonly used and has little personality because of how plain it is. This has it's positives though, as clearly Twitter users found it to be more readable than Gotham.

Given that the text on the posters is meant to reflect human speech, having a perfectly constructed font such as Helvetica that has no obvious imperfections doesn't reflect the imperfection of human speech. A slightly more imperfect and quirky font such as Klavika Bold (below), reflects human speech a lot better. This is very similar to the font used in the Facebook logo. Finding the balance between imperfection and ugliness has got to be considered though, otherwise I'd end up using comic sans.

Given that the audience for the campaign is young and interacts with the internet regularly, it has to be considered that Gotham is popular on the internet and in contemporary design, which is important given that the posters will have to look modern. That said, I try to avoid using Gotham because of the political connotations it carries after it was popularised by Shepard Fairey's Hope poster for Barack Obama's campaign. This is especially relevant given that politics isn't something that is stereotypically a major interest to young people.

All things considered, the font I will use will be Avenir (below) because of how it balances between Helvetica Neue, Klavika and Gotham. It has a noticeable similarity in glyph shape to Gotham, especially clear in the perfectly round O and C. Like Klavika, there are some slight geometric imperfections, especially in the angles, which don't always look like they belong in the same typeface, like in the W and K. At the same time it's regular and invisible enough to not detract from the content of the message like Helvetica is.