Maryland Institute College of Art students experimenting with different states of typography in a single poster collage.

When looking through the various examples of typography I was immediately drawn to this poster from thinkingwithtype.com. The the students from the Maryland Institute College of Arts are experimenting with different aspects to typography. In my opinion, each corner of this poster displays a different aspect of each of the concepts.

The word “elimination” serves as a line. Immediately my eye reads from left to right, but also top to down because of the flurry of “t”s that are seemingly falling away. the “t”s also serve as individual points, because my eye follows each of them individually down to the bottom of the poster. Each serves as a method of transportation for the eye. 

The “Immigration” poster in my opinion serves as a plane. One can almost imagine the rectangular shape that the student is trying to create for the viewers here. This plane creates a way of reading, in that my eyes start from the bottom and gradually ventures to the top of the page.

Finally, the “Expansion” corner of this poster serves as a scale, but more of in the sense that it is using a compressive and expansive technique to make the word seem squished together and at the same time expanded out. This makes me feel like although I am only reading one word that my eyes are drawn across the entire page.

In a way every sector of this poster makes use of negative space. The white background brings forward the effects that the typography is achieving and creates the various parts of the words as points. My eye is drawn to whatever parts of the poster of are set in black, because of the sheer expanse that is the negative white space.

These posters have given me a better understanding of point, line, plane, and scaling in a practical sense. I find myself inspired and would love to incorporate some of these methods within my final product.