FONTS ARE FUN

Font is what you use, and typeface is what you see

Here is Lisa Kirkham sharing the latest Plaister Press book, We’re Going to Build a Dam with her daughter, budding writer, Hannah. Lisa is the typographic designer for Plaister Press books.

    We had a lot of fun with the typographic design of this book, bringing about an interplay of text, image and typeface, all feeding into the narrative. Here, the lettering is used graphically and it follows the movement of the stream.

 

My illustrations are done in watercolour with a strong ink line that Lisa matched with the font, Compendio. This has a rough, broken line; scruffy like the little boys on the beach. A gradation of tone is used to enhance the text; here the paler tone of the word ‘sand’ suggests a substance of a different texture to boulders and rocks:

 

And here, Lisa managed to get the feel of 'grit' with tiny dots:

Here it's all about sound; making the lettering imply sound in an illustrative way.

 

When, at the end of the story, the dam is breaking up, the lettering becomes increasingly tied in with the action in the way it is angled and positioned.

 

 

One of the things I've enjoyed the most since starting my own publishing company has been working with a typographic designer at the planning stage of a book.