Studio Brief 1 - Logotype part 3 (typeface research)

To create our logotypes, we are basing them on one of 6 basic typefaces. According to the Italian designer Massimo Vignelli - these are the only typefaces you need.


Vignelli wrote in the Vignelli Canon that he sees typography as a discipline to organize information in the most objective way possible. He do not like typography intended as an expression of the self, as a pretext for pictorial exercises, and as a modernist is of the opinion that desktop publishing is at fault for an abundance of unnecessary typefaces - or as Vignelli calls them - visual pollution.

To prove this, he hosted an exhibition displaying only the 6 basic typefaces.
These included:

Garamond was created by French Renaissance punch cutter Claude Garamond around 1530. 

 Century was created by Lynn Boyd Benton for Century magazine, to be a readable typeface. The stroke weights, character heights and spacing all made it legible.

 Times New Roman was created by Stanley Morrison for the Times Newspaper London, and adapted from Monotype Plantin 113.

Futura was inspired by the Russian Contsructivist movement and the Bauhaus mantra 'form follows function'. It was created by Paul Renner.

Helvetica was created in the 1950's by Max Miedinger and Edouard Hoffman as an improvement of the typeface Akzidenz Grotesk. It is the most predominant typeface following the International Typographic Style/ Swiss Style.

 Bodoni was created by Giambattista Bodoni. It is usually used as display type, as opposed to text type.