what if 'there will be blood' was in comic sans

January 31, 2011 2:23 PM

I'm teaching visual arguments and want examples of how fonts (or spacing, but especially fonts), drastically change the 'message' of a visual piece.

I thought about using Sporcle or Mental Floss's font quizzes in class as a way of showing that we have pretty ingrained notions about what kind of fonts accompany certain products, movies, etc. but I think a lot of the quiz things are not things my students will know (or will know from the logo rather than the font itself).

Ideally, I'm looking for either:
a) a website where I can type in something academic and show it in Star Wars font, action-movie font, etc. so they can see how the tone changes, or

b) a website with examples of ads or other visual things that use fonts in a humorous, unexpected, or inappropriate way, which will illustrate how fonts immediately introduce some expectation of the genre/situation.

I'm also interested in showing them how the manipulation of blank or empty space changes a message, but this might be easier to come up with on my own.

My Google-fu hasn't turned up quite what I'm looking for. Any suggestions (or other similar ideas besides the ones I listed?) Thanks!

posted by nakedmolerats to education (10 answers total)

nakedmolerats: "a) a website where I can type in something academic and show it in Star Wars font, action-movie font, etc. so they can see how the tone changes"

For this part, Google Docs or your word processor of choice would work. Prepare the text in advance, and then choose the various fonts in class.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 2:27 PM on January 31, 2011

When I used to teach film, and would focus on the various conventions of genres, font in title sequences was very important to these studies. Thus, could you perhaps turn this notion on its head, and take a random collection of letters, - let's say, "BMWOTJFWIR" - put these letters into various fonts that you know are associated to a particular genre, and see if your students can recognize the genre based on the font? This might provide them with a fun/interesting way to recognize the importance of font.
posted by AlliKat75 at 2:32 PM on January 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

For this part, Google Docs or your word processor of choice would work. Prepare the text in advance, and then choose the various fonts in class.

I thought about this but I don't think they have, for example, "Star Wars" font or other things that are immediately identifiable as a brand (do they)? But yeah, this could work too - I think my students would see it as more "legit" somehow from a website and not "our weird teacher messing around in Word", I guess.

/thread sitting
posted by nakedmolerats at 2:43 PM on January 31, 2011

Dafont.com lets you enter a line of text and see it in multiple fonts - or you could download the fonts and roll your own. There are several brand-like fonts on the site, including Star Wars ("Star Jedi"), Tron ("TR2N"), Sega ("Sega Logo Font"), and others.
posted by Paragon at 2:49 PM on January 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

nakedmolerats: "I thought about this but I don't think they have, for example, "Star Wars" font or other things that are immediately identifiable as a brand (do they)? But yeah, this could work too - I think my students would see it as more "legit" somehow from a website and not "our weird teacher messing around in Word", I guess."

:-) I can see how this could be a concern. I don't know of any sites that do that - maybe someone else will.

But here's a site with lots of famous fonts from movies and tv shows and games and whatnot that might help if you choose to download your own.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 2:59 PM on January 31, 2011

The "sample documents" section of Typography for Lawyers has some good examples.
posted by Uncle Ira at 3:08 PM on January 31, 2011

Not exactly what you're looking for, but related, I think! Dawn Shaikh wrote a dissertation on how people perceive different font faces. In a several studies, she looks at how typeface choice influences perceptions of a job applicant's qualifications and a company's trustworthiness, among other things.
posted by kittydelsol at 3:58 PM on January 31, 2011 [2 favorites]

This might be a useful teaching aid. From an Australian comedy show.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 5:17 PM on January 31, 2011 [1 favorite]

I just recently had my students look at fonts in advertising and used this one and this one as examples for them to compare (PETA's "We are not nuggets" ads). The image is the same, but the fonts are different. Perhaps these would be a way to start the conversation about fonts and their effectiveness for different audiences.
posted by BlooPen at 8:31 AM on February 1, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/nyregion/08blocks.html?ex=1203829200&en=8bf71850a95182ed&ei=5070

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/01/27/what_font_says_change/
posted by xammerboy at 2:54 PM on February 1, 2011