It’s easy to create contrast in your typography by using different colours of text (not too many).
Before the printing press, when text was drawn by hand, it was common for colourful, ornamented initials to be placed on pages. With the advent of mechanical type and for economic reasons, these fancy letters were dropped.
Even today, it’s not always economical to print in “full colour” so sometimes, using black with one other colour is the best way to add colour.
Even if you have the budget to print in full colour or if you are designing web graphics, only using one colour besides black can be a wise way to go as the contrast creates strength, simplicity and unity of design.
One of my own projects used this very technique. The cover of the program for the Pacific Contact program is printed using just two colours (black and red). Because the print run is fairly small, running it in full colour (four colour, CMYK) is not feasible.
Which other colour to use?
You should try to use a colour appropriate for your message. Warm colours such as red jump out at you on the page, whereas cold colours such as blue, recede.
In other words, red screams action. Blue says “cool” so if you are doing a poster for a play about an ice queen, you may want to use a cold colour.
Keep in mind that a hot colour like red can dominate a page, so use it sparingly. If you had two words, one in a light text and one in a heavy text, you’d probably not want the heavy text to be in red unless it was very appropriate.
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The image above is from the front cover of the Pacific Contact program. The image on the cover is of MOVE: the company.
“If I’m going to sing like someone else, then I don’t need to sing at all.” – Billie Holiday
Me, in 1985
Or, to put Billie Holiday’s quotation into marketing terms, “If my business is going to be like everybody else, then I don’t need to be in business at all.”
True, there are lots of look-a-like businesses with common services but that’s not really what I’m talking about here. There were lots of singers, but Billie Holiday was not like any other.
To me, it’s about having personality in your business. If you’re just one person such as an artist, let your personality show through. In terms of the Internet, speak your mind on twitter or facebook, have a website or blog that shows who you are really are, not some corporate-looking image.
Let your “weirdness” show.
If you are a bigger organization, let the people who work there have their personalities shine through. Don’t use slogans and hollow messages like “for what matters” if in fact, you don’t really care what matters. If you don’t care, say so.
Be real.
This all seems obvious, but I don’t think we do it enough. I don’t think we show ourselves enough. I think in many small business, arts organizations included, we don’t let our personality show through and shine.
Too often, we’re bland, bland, bland.
Don’t sing like someone else.
“We need help overcoming rationality sometimes, and allowing our thoughts to wander and metamorphose as they do in sleep.” – David Gelernter (professor of computer science at Yale University)
I read an interesting article about the Internet by David Gelernter at Edge. It is full of thought-provoking ideas about where the Internet may be headed, but one idea that jumped at me was how we really do live so “rationally” on the Web. We get really stuck in our methods of finding information and using information.
I guess this is what we do in life, too.
It’s why we only hang around people who think like us, or look like us, or… Essentially, we get stuck in ruts.
We live in a society that wants us to be more rational and yet it seems to me, that the very cool stuff that happens, the creative endeavours, the new discoveries, the exciting art that inspires others happens when people are less rational.
I’m not thinking that we always need to be less rational, but I think being that way more often would be a good idea for all of us.
Being open to ideas that are different, new or challenging seems pretty important. There are three things we can use the Internet for to make sure this happens.
- Listen to people with very opposing ideas and beliefs
- Speak our own mind, honestly and courageously
- Wander aimlessly sometimes, utterly “wasting time”
Oh boy, what fun!
“Why is it like that and not like this?” Jonathon Ive – Apple
This video about the design of Apple’s unibody laptops is so apropos about any kind of design that it’s well worth the six minutes it takes to watch it.
We so often look at a finished design on a page and say, “of course that’s how it should be,” but when we sit down at an empty page, we feel so lost as to how take all the pieces and put them together.
Listen to what Jonathan Ive says about designing and think about it the next time you are designing a printed page or a website.
My reasons for blogging have changed since I started a year ago (Spring 2009).
At first, I thought it would be a way to show examples of my work in an easily updatable fashion.
In June 2009, I had an epiphany at an Arts Summit when I heard Kris Krug speak. I then started to ramp it up a little by posting about once per week on things that were on my mind. My topics were somewhat scattered and I’d not really figured out what I should be writing about.
Then, in late December 2009, I decided to give myself a challenge: blog weekdays for one month. I started on the last week of December and have now successfully gone for two months on this schedule.
To give myself some parameters, I broke my topics into general themes for each day of the week (this post fits into “Work Wednesday) which, has really helped me focus.
But why do I do it?
- I enjoy it.
- It’s a way to show more of myself (good and bad) to clients and potential clients. It’s a way to make myself more human in the digital world.
- Most importantly, it helps me organize my thoughts and allows me to focus on what I do and why I do it regarding work (and play). I look at it very selfishly in that I do it, not to garner a huge readership or make money directly from my blog, but because I get better, personally and professionally, because of it.I’m not a professional writer and my grammar and sentence structure is not perfect, but that’s not the point for me. I want to focus on what goes on inside. If what I have to say sparks some interest for others, great. If not, that’s fine too.
There are times when I wonder if the time investment is worth it so I suppose, I could decide to stop this routine, but for now, it’s making sense for me.
This design tip can be subtle or dramatic.
With contrast of form we are talking about the form of the letters themselves and making sure that there is contrast in them.
In a simple example, there is contrast of form between two letters of the same font such as
We want to be more dramatic than that so another example would be using an italicized word in a sentence as in:
Mahler’s finest work is Symphony No. 5 written in 1901 and 1902.
The “Symphony No. 5” is italicized but it’s in the same font as the text around it.
A more dramatic example would be using a drop capital in a different font from the body text. In the following example, the letter “F” is in a sans serif face followed by a serif face for the body copy:
Try it out. Just keep in mind that to make something be in contrast, subtlety usually doesn’t cut it.
One of my clients, Bill Usher of Kicking Horse Culture in Golden, BC spoke with me about what he does to market performing arts presentations.
He speaks about the multi-pronged approach including posters (how many and where they are placed), sandwich boards on the main street (where the City turns a blind eye to the by-law infraction), email and web marketing, podcasts, newspaper ads and the face-to-face opportunities at the events themselves.
Bill also speaks about the importance of treating the touring artists well and making sure they feel welcomed and at home. This is probably because Bill was a touring artist himself and knows the impact this can have on the artist making a connection with the audience.
What really struck me about Bill’s comments was how important it is to cover a lot of bases. All the pieces go together into garnering long-term loyalty with the audiences.
It’s about branding.
According to Bill, there is still more they could be doing such as using Twitter and Facebook more to reach a different audience though he mentioned the risks of alienating one audience for another.
My interview is almost 40-minutes long, but if you’re a small-town performing arts presenter, I think you’ll get a lot from hearing what Bill has to say.
Interview with Bill Usher of Kicking Horse Culture in Golden, BC
An often-heard phrase is “you’ve got to find balance in life.” We spend a lot of time thinking this is what we need and berating ourselves for not finding it or we blame others for throwing us off balance.
Maybe it’s semantics, but I contend that balance is something we should not be striving for when it comes to work and life. It’s a myth.
If balance was how everything worked, nothing would ever change. The planet we live on and the life on it would never have come into existence.
It’s when we get off balance that exciting things happen.
Back in the “old days” long before computer graphics and digital type, real artists had to draw illustrations by hand and even create special type by hand.
This is the first Kokanee beer bottle label which was designed by my dad, George McLachlan in 1960.
Kokanee Beer Bottle Label designed in 1960 by George McLachlan
He painted the glacier and he hand-lettered the Kokanee Pilsen Beer text.
Now that’s talent!
P.S. I posted this blog post from the BUZZ cafe which is located at Homer and Smithe Streets in Vancouver, BC. It’s the same building my dad created the artwork in 50 years ago when the building was an ad agency.
What would I do if I didn’t need money? This question came up over at Julien Smith’s “In Over Your Head” site. My post today is mostly my comment to his post, but it pertains well to “working.”
If I didn’t need any money:
- I would take on only a very few work projects at any one time and only ones that really interested me. The majority would be with solo artists or projects for very cool, little non-profits.
- I would speak more in front of people, not because it’s something I’m afraid of but because it’s something I so enjoy doing. It seems to bring out my old “performing” side that gives me so much joy.
- I would NOT spend time doing administrative work or projects.
Outside of work:
- I would read more books split evenly between fiction and non-fiction.
- I would take up photography again like I did when I was younger, not to do anything with the images, but simply for the process of taking the images and the joy I get from that. This would also take me to physical places I wouldn’t necessarily go to.
- I would sleep more (which would be possible because of a shorter, less demanding “to do” list. (I know from experience that when my “to do” list gets smaller, I sleep better.)
- I would exercise more than I do now (though I do already exercise a fair bit).
I could do all of these things but I need the courage to let go. Letting go of the incredibly strong feeling of having to say “yes” to work all the time is the toughest. (I’m not confusing this with other things in life that we do should say yes to).
In many ways, work life and non-work life blur already for me. I could see this becoming more the case. Now, I just need to tweak a little here and there, sell a condo, build a house on Hornby Island, and bang, I’ll then encounter the life I have just described!
Well, except for all the other things that will come up to complicate everything.
