Typographic Design Companies

reviewing a project from each site:

Fontsmith and Daltonmag

by discussing the benfits of *bespoke typographic design.

Fontsmith

Fontsmith is a leading London based type design studio founded in 1999 by Jason Smith. The studio consists of a team dedicated to designing and developing high quality typefaces for both independent release as well as bespoke fonts for international clients.

We pride ourselves on our ability to produce distinctive and unique typefaces & logos for a broad range of clients.

Bespoke type project channel 4 by fontsmith

looking at the briefs this company has done, i can see that that bespoke typography really does have its own unique font quality, diffrent from other fonts used and designed to fit in with the client and makes the brand recognisable just because of it bespoke typography.

for its channel 4 bespoke typography this company really has made it unique, i have not seen a font alike this before and when i see it on the tv or advertised around, it always stands out, clearly as channels 4's branding. they really have done well putting this signature on it.

what makes it likes this being unique with its font face is how it mixes styles that contrast, like it mixes sans serif with elements of  serif on characters like for example the letters 

'i' and 'r'

Aswell as how usually with sans type, its characters have a straight body that ranges from thick to thin on its stroke and would both have a beak and arm that is hard edged unlike this type design that has a beak and tail serif on the characters that stand up and touch the descender.

This is something that stands out straight away as usually fonts stick to continually using serif or sans serif to itself but in this case it has set the type off.

Its font is similar to the style that was used on early computers and typwriters.

Its target audience for channel 4 is quite broad range from all ages-children to adults with something for everyone, so the type obvious has to be fitting to this, which is does as it does not, have a definate genre or age to it.

Daltonmag

Custom Font Design is where Dalton Maag began. They say they can create a truly unique typeface design for you, your clients, and your brand, meeting every design and technical challenge.

                                           

The client had asked to draw a link with old cinema and theatre signs in a custom font suite to be part of the Central School of Speech & Drama's new identity.  (this is a theatrical,drama and acting university) 


the design would be to fit students,teachers and potential students aswell as fitting in with the subject of study the university focuses on. 


a design studio called studio 8 has already developed the concept of bold grotesque characters with an inline to simulate neon lit signs, so their basic requirement for the font family was a solid bold, bold with inline, and a stand-alone light font that visually resembled the inline and they just had to refine the design to its full potential.


The type from looking at it, is quite successful as it combines all its elements required like the target audience and what its being designed for, combining all this together captures this because of being a bespoke type, unlike if a pre-existing font was used its might fit with its target audience etc but it would not work relatively better as a design that is being used to create the brand of the university as it would not be the same font being used in the world for the brand, unlike using bespoke typography, it is solely for that brand and makes it unquie being the only brand in the world to use it and therefore people will automatically know it as this brand and it can be used on many aspects of branding that will get it known and promoted, just even being used on its own will have this affect because of it solely by being a bespoken type means its unique.


The design uses similarities to the font used on the title of the 'burlesque' as it uses bold sans serif characters and instead of having a fine stroke on the inside of the letter it has dots, which makes it relatively similar, and both being theatrical  the subject matter is the same but both recognisable as two separate fonts that will not be mistaken.

"BURLESQUE"-font similarity used to the bespoken
typographic design for  central school.

This concurs that the font designed for the brand is quite successful and that using a bespoken font can really promote a brand and work in its favour more affectively than a already existing type put to use.

guide to anatomy of letter forms for reference to my review.

(*term bespoke =an item custom-made to the buyer's specification, in this case typography custom made to the client.)