The Power Of Legible And Illegible Text

"Form and function together creates typographic excellence." R. Roger Remington

Type plays a vital role in graphic design due to a number of reasons. "it is an informal measure of how easy it is to distinguish one letter or word from another in a particular typeface. Factors such as "height, character shape, strokes, serif, sans-serif, and weight can affect the legibility"of a text to an extent. It also affects how the information has been read and understood, for example a big bold title can be noticed and read immediately, whereas a smaller text would require a person to come closer. Legibility and illegibility also depends on the deliberate style and design for instance, the comparison of typography between David Carson and Paula Scher to Massimo Vignelli.

Modernism began in the late 19th century but started to heighten in the 20th century.Modernists followed grids and kept their work clean with simplicity and san-serif typography, this idea was to create strong graphics that were against commercialism, greed and cheapness." They were also known as "Avant Garde" who were significant in the developments of graphic design because they broke away from traditional techniques and rules. In the modernist era, typography was "heavily influenced by the machine aesthetic of the industrial revolution." Serif fonts were believed to be distracting, therefore, san-serif typography is the best fit due to its simplified and accurate form.The introduction of the san-serif font Akzidenz-Greskn in 1986 influenced fonts such as Helvetica and Univers. Bauhaus was a very significant part of Modernism, they believed "form follows function". Bauhaus was a German school which was founded by Walter Gropias in 1919, it soon

became an art movement which influenced future designs.

The students believed in the style of minimalism, they used

Bauhaus font geometric shapes (mostly squares and rectangles) and

commonly used the primary colours. The Bauhaus font is

curvy and has small gaps between joints and it is also a san-serif font, further adding to their ideology of simplicity. Herbert Bayer was a student who studied at Bauhaus and "developed a crisp visual style and adopted use of all lower-case san serif typeface for most Bauhaus publications." Swiss Design also known as International Typographic style, originated in the 1940s and 50s. Similar to the Bauhaus, Swiss Design also believed in minimalism and communication. In order to help them put across their message, they use a strict grid system which enables them to arrange elements within a design in an orderly manner. The main idea was to create a strong visual design.

In conclusion, legible and illegible text can be very powerful in their own sense. I was able to understand how effective they can be, for example, in the style of David Carson, hints of the message could possibly be found in the collage and the images used. However, in Massimo Vignellis and Paula Schers posters, they can be very upfront as the texts are clear. During this process, I have found a specific technique which can work in both styles. This technique consists of copy and pasting the poster and changing the color on each one then chopping them up and placing them back together.