I follow NY Times on Instagram and I never noticed how nice their graphics are till now, as I'm obviously paying much more attention to things like this in hopes of inspiration.
For their posts and stories they use a simple white/ black/ grey colour scheme along with the use of images with text overlaid. The monotone colour scheme is obviously inspired by traditional printed newspapers and suits the tone of the brand: professional, informative.
I was mainly inspired by the typeface that they use. I found it it was a mixture of Cheltenham Bold and Cheltenham Bold Italic (along with Helvetica for body text and information). As time has gone on throughout my time at uni, I've been gradually getting more and more interested in typography - which is a good thing. I can't really explain why but I felt that this typeface had a really appropriate feeling to it. Probably because the designers at NY Times did their research and picked Cheltenham because it has some sort of interesting connection to printed news.
I'm definitely going to have a go with designing with it, I'm excited to see it paired with the journalistic style of illustration as I think that that will feel really connected and appropriate.
While I was thinking about type I started thinking about type that surrounds the news that also isn't so obvious. I thought about local corner shops and how the signage is always quite quirky and unique, often retro with interesting colours. This isn't a new idea within the project, as I have thought about designing for corner shop signage previously. Taking direct inspiration from the type used would be quite an interesting route.
type: Cooper Black. Red and blue colour way with shadow effect.
Bold sans serif type in red and blue colourway
Serif font, kind of similar to Windsor, paired with italic serif font, script-like. Red and blue colour way again.
similar (more modern) type: Beni Bold. Again, a red and blue colour way, a theme?
type: Impact MT
type: Novarese Std Ultra
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200325-a-cultural-history-of-the-beloved-corner-shop
I've got a lot of things to experiment with here, which is a good thing. I also had a quick look at the above article which discussed the history of our corner shops. Although it wasn't very helpful, it provided the above image of hand-painted shop advertising which could be an interesting visual to experiment with. It's a little bit far-removed, but it could work?
I remembered that shop fronts and signage have always been something I've been inspired by. The above image I took a while ago and added to my random inspiration folder. Although it's a shut down fish shop - I feel like the premise is still the same. There's something really appealing and almost comforting about these 'retro' signs.
- Cheltenham typeface
- Red and blue colour combination
- Shadow effect
- Bold sans serif
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