Case Studies: The Impact of Color, Branding, and Typography
Case study - Alpha Physical Therapy banner
Starting with an existing logo ("a donut tree!", according to one friend) and color, I searched for a suitable font to go with it. My initial choices were... unsuitable. My favorite fonts were deemed chaotic, frightening, deformed, not a good look in a banner for a health care professional. So I dropped back to a process learned in Web 112, starting with writing out the name of the company in as many fonts as seemed appropriate. I thumbed through 1200 fonts (yes, 1200; there are so many fun ones out there!) and looked for ones with interesting forms for the "Alpha" part of the name. ("Physical Therapy" will be in a simple compatible font.) Here are the files.
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Next step will be to eliminate by theme - fonts that are spindly, weeby, crippled, injured, malformed, tired, delusional... You may walk in to a physical therapist's office that way, but coming out of treatment, the end result should be a font - er - person who is straight, relaxed, healthy-looking. So it goes with fonts, our little proxies. They should also perhaps seem painterly, low-tech, hands-on, to go with the donut tree logo.
Weeding out - Semi-finals
Here's a page of semi-finalists. I've added an upper case version of ALPHA on some fonts that have nice letter forms. For fonts that have more stylized forms, I've gotten rid of "Physical Therapy" because I'll use a simpler font for those words.
I see that I have a taste for early 20th century styles. The style second from the bottom is called Chocolate Box. It's a top contender right now.
Third from the bottom is called Harrington. Another fave. I think it has that relaxed healthy look. Insouciance, even. These two look best with the Donut Tree logo. Mm. Donuts...
Round Three -
Went off and had some lunch.
Here's a page of finalists. They all look good with the Donut Tree A few I know will get killed in the end, but I don't want to rule my pets out just yet.
Nearly done -
Need a little rearrangement but these three made the cut. Going to bed now. Will tweak another day.