Doctoral Thesis Typography in Advertising Typografie v reklamě Author: Aleksandar Donev, MSc Degree programme: Visual Arts (P8206) Degree course: Multimedia and Design (8206V102) Supervisor: Doc. PhDr. Zdeno Kolesár, Ph.D. Zlín, December 2015 © Aleksandar Donev Published by Tomas Bata University in Zlín in the Edition Doctoral Thesis. The publication was issued in the year 2015 Key words in English: Typography, Advertising, Visual Communication, Design, Typefaces, Fonts Key words in Czech: Typografie, Reklama, Vizuální Komunikace, Design, Písma, Fonty Full text of the Doctoral Thesis is available in the Library of TBU in Zlín ISBN 978-80-……… ABSTRACT This thesis is set to investigate the use of type and typography in advertising, the role of typography in rendering the advertising message and the effects it has on the same. Typography and advertising both have been researched significantly all over the world but mainly as a two separate disciplines without showing the importance of their connection. The aim of my thesis is to fill that gap and show the significance of typography in advertising and their relationship in the communication process. The approach undertaken in this thesis is mainly theoretical, including statistics, a survey, a case study and an analysis of literature from various sources in the field of the research. I have analysed the factors that make typography suitable and effective for advertising purposes. With this research I am able to confirm that the use of typography and type for advertising purposes is slightly different than its use for other purposes. I am hoping that my work will make designers and advertisers more aware of the importance of typography in the creation of advertisements and that they will make better use of it. Tato práce zkoumá užívání písma a typografie v oblasti reklamy a jejich roli při vytváření reklamního sdělení. Témata typografie i reklamy jsou po celém světě sice dobře probádaná, avšak jako dva samostatné obory bez důrazu na jejich vzájemné propojení. Cílem této práce je tuto mezeru zaplnit a prozkoumat význam typografie v reklamě a jejich vzájemný vztah v komunikačním procesu. Můj přístup při zpracování tohoto tématu je zejména teoretický a opírá se o statistiky, ankety, případové studie a analýzu mnoha zdrojů tematické literatury. Součástí práce je taktéž analýza faktorů, díky kterýmž se typografie stává vhodnou právě pro reklamní účely, a na základě skutečností vzešlých z tohoto výzkumu lze vyvodit, že využití typografie a písma pro reklamní účely se liší od jejího využití v jiných oborech. Pevně věřím, že má práce pomůže praktikujícím designerům a lidem z reklamního průmyslu poodhalit důležitost typografie v celém tvůrčím procesu a povede k lepším výsledkům při jejím užívání. 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Zdeno Kolesár from the Department of Theoretical Studies at the Faculty of Multimedia Communications for all his support, guidance, feedback and counselling and for his patience with me during my PhD studies and the process of completing my thesis. The great support from my colleagues Michal Kupilík, Václav Skácel, Bohuslav Stránský and the rest of the staff from Digital and Product Design departments helped me to integrate better at the university which was a new environment for me and also I would love to thank them for all their suggestions and opinions about my work. I would like to thank Eva Prokopová for the continual help with the administrative paperwork during my studies. Thanks to Dr. Anthony Cahalan who kindly provided copy of his PhD thesis completed at Curtin University of Technology in 2004 which helped me to set the basis of my questionnaire in order to determine the current trends in typography and also served as a reference for structuring my thesis. I am also thankful to Radmila Karanakova Stefanovska from Faculty of Natural and Technical Sciences in Shtip for the help and support that she provided to me during my stay there. Thanks to Sam Berlow, Stephen Coles, Nick Sherman everyone else who contributes to the independent archive of typography “Fonts in Use”. I would love to thank the friendly community “Typography.Guru” for sharing their knowledge in the field of typography. I am thankful to all those anonymous people worldwide who took their time and effort to fill the questionnaire and provide answers for my research. Thanks to all the authors whose work was used in the process of writing this thesis which I have done my best to provide proper credit and bibliographic information. I would like to thank all my colleagues or friends especially to Filip, Katerina, Lidija, Ilija, Stefan, Petr, Michael and Gavin who gave me a huge amount of support or assistance during the process of completing my thesis. Finally I would love to thank my family for their unconditional love, support and encouragement in life to whom I am dedicating this PhD thesis. 4 CONTENTS Abstract ............................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................. 4 Theoretical positions and methodology ............................................................ 7 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 9 Part I: Semiotic, historic, psychological and aesthetic aspects of typefaces .. 16 1. Communicative, semiotic and semantic aspects of type ..................... 16 2. Evolution of letterforms and writing ................................................... 27 3. History of typography and its relationship to advertising ................... 39 4. Type Expression in design and advertising ......................................... 57 5. Typeface Classification ....................................................................... 72 5.1 Serif Typefaces ............................................................................. 74 5.2 Sans Serif ...................................................................................... 79 5.3 Display .......................................................................................... 84 6. The psychological impact of type ....................................................... 89 7. Colour and Type ................................................................................ 103 Part II - Use of type in contemporary design and advertising ...................... 115 8. Design and visual communication .................................................... 115 9. Relationships of visual communication, design and art to advertising 125 10. Functions of type in advertising design ......................................... 137 11. Tradition, fashion and trends of the type in advertising ................ 147 5 12. Use of typography for advertising across various media ............... 164 12.1 Traditional advertising................................................................. 164 12.2 Online advertising ....................................................................... 179 12.3 Ambient media advertising ......................................................... 187 13. “White out of Red” - The Economist Case Study .......................... 190 14. Universal model for use of type in advertising .............................. 199 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 211 Bibliography .................................................................................................. 215 List of figures................................................................................................. 229 Appendices .................................................................................................... 241 Appendix A - Anatomy and framework of type terminology ....................... 241 Appendix B - Survey: Typography in Advertising ....................................... 250 Appendix C - Survey Responses ................................................................... 257 Appendix D – “Bad” and “Good” Typefaces statistics ................................. 269 List of publications and conferences ............................................................. 273 Curriculum Vitae ........................................................................................... 274 6 THEORETICAL POSITIONS AND METHODOLOGY My past experience has been with engineering, particularly with printing technologies, before moving to creative design, media and advertising. Although I have been very interested in lettering and typography I never had the chance to study the field properly or receive a professional training and therefore my knowledge in the field was limited. Researching in the field of typography has been a big challenge for me. In the process of writing this dissertation I have been investigating the topic by analysing, synthesising and interpreting information and data about the use of typography for advertising purposes. This involved the study of information and data connected with the use of type in advertising collected from books, papers, articles, online databases and websites. In order to be able to point out the research perspectives and methods used for my research I would like to illustrate the relationship between elements of the research process as suggested by Crotty (1998), adapted by David Grey in his book “Doing Research in the Real World”1. Relationship between epistemology,