Typographic Form and Expression 

One of the objectives of the designer who deals with type matter involves readability. Unfortunately, however, this function is often taken too literally and overemphasized at the expense of style, individuality, and the very effectiveness of the printed piece itself. By carefully arranging type areas, spacing, size, and color, the typographer is able to impart to the printed page a quality that helps to dramatize the contents. He is able to translate type matter into tactile patterns. By concentrating the type area and emphasizing the margin (white space), he can reinforce, by contrast, the textural quality of the type. The resulting effect on the reader may be properly compared to the sensation produced by physical contact with metal type.

With asymmetric balance, he is able to achieve greater interest. Bilateral symmetry offers the spectator too simple and too obvious a statement. It offers little or no intellectual pleasure, no challenge. For the pleasure derived from observing asymmetric arrangements lies partly in overcoming resistances which, consciously or not, the spectator has in his own mind, and in thus acquiring some sort of aesthetic satisfaction. (For a more comprehensive discussion along these lines, see Roger Fry’s essay “Sensibility.”)1  

In ordering the space and in distributing his typographic material and symbols, the designer is able to predetermine, to a certain degree, the eye movements of the spectator.

A typeface that sometimes is described as having character is often merely bizarre, eccentric, nostalgic, or simply buckeye.

To distort the letters of the alphabet in the style of Chinese calligraphy (sometimes referred to as chop suey lettering) because the subject happens to deal with the Orient is to create the typographic equivalent of a corny illustration.To mimic a woodcut style of type to go with a woodcut; to use bold type to harmonize with heavy machinery, etc., is clichéd thinking. The designer is unaware of the exciting possibilities inherent in the contrast of picture and type matter. Thus, instead of combining a woodcut with a harmonious type style (Neuland), a happier choice would be a more familiar design (Caslon, Bodoni, or Helvetica) to achieve the element of surprise and to accentuate by contrast the form and character of both text and picture.

Two letters from a Cresta Blanca Wine logotype (1943) demonstrate how the simple addition of ornament changes a commonplace letter (associated more with bold newspaper headlines than with delicate vintage wines; to a memorable image. Here, contrast plays a significant role.

By contrasting type and pictorial matter, the designer is able to create new combinations and elicit new meanings. For instance, in the Air- Wick newspaper advertisement, the old and the new are brought into harmony by contrasting two apparently unrelated subjects - nineteenth-century wood engravings and twentieth-century typewriter type.

The surrounding white space helps to separate the advertisement from its competitors, creates an illusion of greater size per square inch, and produces a sense of cleanliness and freshness.

The numeral as a means of possesses many of the same qualities as the letter. It can also be the visual equivalent of time, space, position, and quantity; and it can help to impart to a printed piece a sense of rhythm and immediacy.

The isolated letter affords a means of visual expression that other kinds of imagery cannot quite duplicate. Letters in the forms of trademarks, seals, and monograms-on business forms, identification tags, athletic jerseys, and even handkerchiefs-possess some magical quality. They serve not only as status symbols but have the virtue of brevity as well.

Punctuation marks, as emotive, plastic symbols, have served the artist as a means of expression in paintings as well as in the applied arts.