This design uses scale in order to alert the reader to the progression of the words in the lyric used for the design. The largest word is used to catch attention while the words get progressively smaller. The work is designed by the art designer who goes by the name Ajnin on the artistic community Behance. The tension created with the size of the letters helps the reader also get a sense of the tone and meaning behind the words even though the song may not have been heard by the person listening. I’m personally very fond of the treatments on the type.

Martha Stewart’s distinct design is that all the designs on her work are clear concise to the point and use colors. The feeling constantly given is one of warmth and simplicity, as her target audience is one that appreciates the natures of those qualities in the things she does. Clear concise easy to follow and hopefully you’ll feel fabulous when its all done.

One important thing to mention is that white is a color that almost needs to be present in all of the deigns, white or something extremely near it like cream or a pale shade of vanilla. Pastels and a pop color are also a staple. While the colors featured may not always be warm the feeling they attempt to express is clear.

Aside from the above example, the type faces are typically easily readable simple and to the point however for a more special occasion this particular book uses a typeface with heavy contrasts in thickness and thin-ness as well as a secondary typeface that features letters at an angle. While this may be more on the wild-side of a Martha Stewart aesthetic it shows that even the deviations from her aesthetic still have the trademark warmness the white and the simplicity. Her website stays true to these themes as well.

1. One Great example of TypeFace Mixing

2. One Creative use of Tracking

3. One Great use of Leading

4. One example of marking paragraphs (in this case they happen to be the dummy text for an article for a magazine layout)

Romain du Roi is literally a style of type that means “King’s Roman”. While this style of type may look like any old stuffy font at first glance the typestyle created upon Louis XIV request in 1692 actually differs from the type before it. The request can be seen as part of the transition from older styles of type, usually known as “Old style”, to a newer more “transitional” style. The difference between oldstyle and transitional type fonts is often unnoticed by many because of the fact that both type styles are serif type-styles(serifs being the little decorative bits attached to letters as seen on the M above). One of the major differences between transitional type styles and the oldstyle fonts is that they have less natural “stress”. Stress being the angle that a font naturally rests at un-italicized( that funky little I you may see in Microsoft word).

One of the most unique features of this type-style as opposed to the ones before it is how it is created. The artists used a very mathematical systematic approach to creating this type-style. Each letter was carefully crafted on a grid piece by piece, as opposed to the older styles not being not nearly as specific. Something to note when considering that this type style wasn’t as inspired by older hand written type and more by science is that King Louis XIV had a scientific committee design the style and the style was developed during the ‘Age of Enlightenment’, which had a pretty strong aversion to tradition. So of course instead of creating a new handwritten type it was much edgier to use 48 by 48 grids on each letter of the alphabet.

The documentary “The Printed Word” was fascinating. I actually visited the bookstore that was featured in the film first, then ended up going to Barnes and Nobles afterwards, even though i preferred the selection of books available at St Marks Books. I think that the idea that ebooks will eventually kill books is a little far fetched. Ebooks along with solid books are more preference as to how media is delivered as opposed to a format change as history has seen with the vinyl record to cassette tape into the mp3. Ebooks allow authors to release there work at a lower cost to a worldwide market almost immediately, while print books allow for memorable items and gifts and books that can’t really be take for granted or replaced. It’s fairly difficult to emulate paper texture differences, popouts and 3d books along with the smell feel and authenticity of a book, nor is it possible to completely disregard the ease of use and connivance of having an entire library of books available in less then a pound of material. Print will never die, as the things that ebooks emulate will always be what ebooks aim to emulate. Further still, independent book stores and book stores themselves likely won’t be entirely phased out forever because as the documentary mentions, bookstores are more about the culture and book selection then selling the books for huge profits.