Following on from the research looking at which words are most used in a selection of protests, the below looks at which font to use for the posters. Reflecting the work of Tre Seals, who created typefaces such as Martin based on the typeface used in the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, including the famous I AM A MAN posters. Trés typefaces reflect protests throughout history and in a talk I attended in which he was speaking, he said how designers should reflect their local area and not look too far for inspiration and content. Using this idea I want to use a typeface that is synonymous with the people of Sunderland and will engage, create connections and arouse pride.
I've taken some images of local brands/places and type that have a strong relationship to sunderland. Unfortunately some of the main ideas I had have recently closed, so some images are from the Internet..
Louis now, the front signage has been unfortunately, removed.
Vaux brewery, which was on the development across from Keel Square
Joplings dept store. Now student flats.
Student flats frontage
Thinking and researching into brands, places and people that have a strong connection to this local area, I have chosen to start with Vaux, who had a brewery in the city from 1837-1999. The brewery inhabited a very central location in the city and held a strong connection to locals.
After research I think the Vaux logo is close to the Helvetica Neue 95 Black typeface, although there are some differences as shown below. Im going to use this typeface for now to show the words and research further to try and find a closer match. I have then looked at the top words used in all the protests and selected a range of these and also the top word from each protest to see how they look aesthetically and collectively. I did in earlier research, talk about using lowercase for the posters so they were not too 'loud' or didn't 'shout' reflecting research into the hierarchy of letters. I think I may look at uppercase for these main words against lowercase for the singular alphabet letters and then also look at all letters being in lowercase, if this is chosen I will look to use a different logo than Vaux for the typeface choice.
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