The book’s 5th project in Designing with Type is to explore the expressive quality of words through typography: “Select five words and explore their expressive quality by manipulating the letter forms. To achieve the desired effect, avoid simply repeating the words or creating an illustration from the letter forms. This exercise requires manipulating typefaces, styles, sizes, and positions.”
After i saw two “contestants” reveal their works at John’s blog iLoveTypography, and since i was curious in what i could come up with, i sat down and just took the words from Karly, one of the typenuts who shared their results with John. Though i don’t really know where manipulating ends and where illustrating starts, here is my go:
Click images to zoom in/out.
Karly used Garamond, Baskerville, Century and Helvetica, but i decided to use only Garamond and Helvetica, because i can’t stand Baskerville and Century, but that is another story i guess.
I am unfuckingbelievable curious what “the judges” have to say now. People know me as hard critic, so don’t be friendly, please! 
I’m happy you took the time to do your own and thank you for the link back to my blog.
I really like your take on both Lost and Magic. You might have to be a typenut to understand what is happening in Lost though.
I don’t understand Charge… it looks to me like you are going for Change instead. Is that it?
“He didn’t charge me like usual, all i needed was some spare change. What a frikkin’ bargain!” – kinda like that.
I am not very happy with the shadows, now that i look at it after a night of sleep.
You’re right Karly, the lost serifs are probably hard to get for someone who is not into typography. At first i wanted to make them crack and “click the shutter” while still falling down, but i thought that would have been too much manipulation.
I like the idea of having homework to do after so many years (Not that i did any back then, but that is another story).
Oh, I understand Charge now. You are the only one that I’ve seen that has tried to illustrate that definition of charge. Very interesting.
I am actually working on more exercises and will be posting them on my blog. I’ve been talking to Johno about it. Seeing everyone do the exercises has been really fun for me and I guess Johno is willing to give out prizes on iLT. I am not sure yet how frequently we’ll be doing these and how it will be judged, but hopefully it’ll generate more interest for people to study and experiment with type.
I must say, the c with a g’s two-story bowl in Magic looks quite interesting.
Well done
[…] flowing, but not too fancy; Baskerville for bright because it was one of the fonts Karly picked and Manuel said he hated it — I wanted to see what the fuss was about (I didn’t — I love […]