Twenty-Six Types of Animals

My Senior Thesis at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 2007.

To most people Typography means nothing more than what the words or letters say. This may be because our brain subconsciously reads everything our eyes land on and immediately tells us what information that type is trying to say. So there is really little need for anyone to pay any close attention to Typography, and most people don’t. Normally, a person’s relationship with a word lasts milliseconds, or maybe seconds depending on how long and complex the word is. With this project I’m hoping to change all of this.
Since Typography is this sort of foreign land I decided to lure people within it by combining it with a very familiar comfortable subject, animals. Since we were children we have learned all about animals, their name, shape, attitude, habitat, you name it. You most definitely learned about the animals prior to acquiring the skill of reading written type/language. I also feel that animals are the perfect subjects for typographic exploration. Much like typefaces, there are millions of species all having their own set of unique variant sub-divisions. So using animals as a bridge, I will show you how much life and personality Typography actually has within, and hopefully the type will linger in your mind longer than the average word would.
I did one typographic study for every letter of the alphabet, one animal for each letter. Also to aid your understanding I developed a simple glyph for each of my animal subjects. The glyph should pick up the slack if your brain is falling short or having trouble making out the word that lies within the type. Some of this typography might be unreadable, but I invite you to step in and explore the Typography and pick it apart, try to understand what is going on within it. Think of it like your 9th grade biology class when you dissected the frog. You need to now get inside and understand that which you come into contact with daily, typography.
Of course just to be on the safe side I will be providing you with what I’m calling “Developmental Commentary.” In other words, I will try to explain to you what I was thinking, or what was taken into consideration while planning and executing the Typographic solution. At first I was going to just list certain characteristics that I focused on during the initial sketching of the type but I feel that may be a little too abstract for some. I might also be able to make it more interesting. I hope you enjoy your typographic safari.

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items are from between 27 Jan 2008 & 31 Jan 2008.