The News-Gazette

This is the header to the Local section of the News-Gazette. Its purpose is to tell you what section of the paper you're reading, as well as who the editors of the paper are. It's a fairly simple design, with only black and white and a little bit of blue. It's not supposed to be decorative, so the fonts are kept simple. The typeface isn't Helvetica, but it's similiar and set on a grid, making everything legible and understandable. The only ornamentation comes in the form of the newpaper's title on the right-hand side. The typeface looks gothic to me, so I think it's supposed to look almost Victorian in nature. It's such a familiar typeface for those of us who subscribe to The News-Gazette, and has been used for so long it's recognized by the majority of people who live in or around Champaign.

Poster

This is a poster I bought at an Ikea a while back and never bothered to put up. I bought it because I really liked the way different typefaces, styles, and images were used to create something unified and enjoyable to look at. I like that it doesn't matter which way you turn it, because there will always be some images that are sideways or upside-down. Its only purpose is to serve as decoration, although I think it's made up of different posters advertising performers (for example, I think the bright yellow square is advertising Bob Marley). There are many different typefaces from different times, instead of sticking to just one or two typefaces characteristic of a specific era of graphic design. Overall I think it's a really great design, because at first glance it just looks like someone threw together all these different colors and typefaces, but as you look around the poster you start to see that everything meshes together because of the lack of similarity among the squares. I think I'm going to have to finally hang this poster up. :)