Week 1 | Leveille

My first example of typeface is from the "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" movie poster. I see the poster every day (it's hanging on my wall right now), but the first thing I always find myself looking at is the movie title. In my opinion, that in itself makes the use of the typeface successful.

The font used was a modified version of Ray Larabie's Goldburg. It consists of small caps, with the exception of the "S" and "T." Some letters were also modified so that they extend slightly higher than the x-height. If you look at the "e" and the "y" of Sweeney, you can see that the "e" is tucked into the "y." Each letter has distinct, sharp serifs which have a similar shape to the razor Sweeney Todd holds in his hand. Within the letters themselves, you can also see each individual line. The format of the letters gives the title a hard-to-miss, bold look that resembles the character well.

The last piece of the typeface is the bottom line, which was made to fit perfectly under the main part of the title. This prevents the rest of the title from taking attention away from Sweeney Todd.

What makes this typeface successful is it's focus on "Sweeney Todd." The boldness and the personality it seems to portray brings the eye directly to the title, and it does so in such a way that the image it compliments isn't lost in the background. There is an overall balance between the image and typeface.

My second example of typeface is Phoenix's "Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix" album. The first thing I noticed is the use of three different fonts. "Wolfgang" is written in a script in order to make it perfect relative to "Amadeus," which is written in a serif font with uppercase letters. This is followed by "Phoenix," which is written in what looks to be a bold sans serif font. The album artist also widened the tracking because it forms a perfect with "Amadeus."

The fact that the album artist was able to create a perfect out of these three words makes it appealing, but the use of three fonts also loses that appeal at the same time. Personally, my favorite part is the format of "Amadeus." The tracking isn't too wide and it creates a balance, or support, between the two contrasting fonts it is sandwiched between.

The typeface would have been better if only two fonts were used, or if the perfect combination was only used between two of the words rather than all three. Even if the album artist kept this combination, the typeface would have looked better if there was less differentiation between the three words. Instead of using a sans serif font for "Phoenix," the font could have been similar to that of "Amadeus."