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A new type publishing brand
Henning von Vogelsang
Posts: 147
For the past few months I have been working on my various type design projects to ramp them up for a release under my own label. I did a thorough brainstorming session over the weekend and came up with a new name: Arity.
I would like to throw this at you and get some feedback, your personal opinion, your gut feeling, your experience and your wisdom. The logo design is in early stages, but I like the direction. What’s more important to me is your opinion on the brand name.
There are some core values behind the brand:
* Reading focussed
* Display (mobile and desktop screen) purpose mainly (but not neglecting paper)
* Searching for new formats
* Contemporary and future oriented
* Less tradition, more direction
* Smart
Before you dissect these values, keep in mind they are merely there to give the brand idea some direction. They are not to be taken literally.
I’m looking forward to your feedback!
(Addendum: for some reason this thread ended up in Lettering Critiques, which was not my intention. I tried to change this, but it appears that is not possible. Sorry for the confusion.)
Before you dissect these values, keep in mind they are merely there to give the brand idea some direction. They are not to be taken literally.
I’m looking forward to your feedback!
(Addendum: for some reason this thread ended up in Lettering Critiques, which was not my intention. I tried to change this, but it appears that is not possible. Sorry for the confusion.)
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But here's a minor suggestion: I wouldn't use "display" in your core values that way, because that word means something different in typography. Perhaps "screen"?
Regarding the brand: if it wouldn’t be about a type design publishing label (traditionally a foundry), I wouldn’t have brought it to this forum of type experts.
I also like the looks of the logo — the colors are wonderful and airy (which sort of mimics the name). It's also the kind of logo that lends itself to motion graphics, if you're interested in that kind of thing.
However, like AbiRasheed, I'd be concerned about how this will work in, both, greyscale and B&W. I'd also be a just little concerned about its readability. It looks nice, but it is severely out of register, which was intentional, but still, it impairs legibility. Actually, I think all these problems are solvable. Securing a good top-level domain for it might be a problem, though.
The brand will be introduced as a website, so it’s screen only in its first iteration. However, I intend to expand on the type publishing business. I am taking this year to try and make it a sustainable project.
Mono [versions of] logos aren't just about printing in black, and besides what Craig said, logos [need to] end up in all kinds of places, some of them anathema to surfacing (versus outlining).
As for the name, my ignorance of high-level mathematics/computing led me to believe it was made-up, referencing words like "clarity" and "rarity." And like Hrant, I like it, at least partly because it doesn't have Foundry, Font(s), or a repurposed publishing term in the name.
I didn’t know the word as well until I stumbled across it by accident. From what I understand, binary and rarity are both relatives to arity. You are right though, it doesn’t matter if people get the actual meaning of the word, as long it conveys the sense some of you described.
The chances the logotype will be printed are very low at the moment. We are talking about a new brand that is display/screen only for the whole first year, or longer. Depending on the success of its introduction, I can think of more marketing budget, which could generate print material or ads in a print magazine. For now, the main application of the logotype will be on screen.
I tested the black and white version, increasing the contrast and impression of “light beams”, which was part of the gradient concept. I wanted something vibrant that doesn’t look too harmonic, more like it’s in motion without actually moving.
Some of you may have noticed I already polished the shapes a lot to reduce the amount of disturbing areas. The top of the yellow A was closed (white triangular gap) and the r-, t- and y-shapes had their tipping points cut off. I left the overlaps that were distinctively visible, also to keep the letter shape, such as the length of the t-bar. Had I shortened that, or cut it off where it touches the adjacent y-shape, I would have created a new shape language. I wanted to retain a sense of the original typeface design.
This logotype is not easy to tame, it lives from the contrasting, vibrant colours and the seemingly accidental overlaps that create new colour areas. It is not a very mature, polished logotype. It is young and a bit non-conformist, just like the brand itself.
For clearer comparison, here is the word set plainly in Bot Sans Semi Bold. What initially drew my attention were the contradicting triangular directions of the uppercase A and the lowercase y, with the i sitting almost centred.
The type you release is so much more important.
Your checkout process is so much more important.
Your whole foundry website is so much more important.
The way you show your typefaces is so much more important.
Even how you reply to your (potential) customers’ emails is so much more important.
Don’t get stuck with the small things that seem big. Focus on how to make your customers’ life better by doing things better than other people. So my piece of advice goes as follows: take what you have, it seems totally fine, and work harder on everything else instead.
(This is all assuming that you’re actually focusing much your energy on this right now—you might be working 100x as much on everything else but only show this)
I'm a bit bothered by the contradiction of the ink trap in /r and the spilled corner in /t, though.
I do like the colors. I agree that having a B/W version is a good investment, though.
I have been working on the typefaces for the past four years. One of them is nearly ready, but there are still months of work ahead for it to be complete. Bot Sans and Bot Mono have all the weights, but no Italics and diacritics are seriously out of order.
Absolutely. You were not off with your thought in brackets.
Interesting comparison, Christian. Antique Olive has a unique spirit. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the font in use (it’s on http://core-ux.com). There is one important rule I am breaking with it, deliberately, for the purpose of improving screen reading. The Sans version was born out of the Monospace version, which is not new, but also rarely uncommon. I remember Blue Monday’s Nitti families followed the same trajectory.
My goal was to find out if the name causes negative or contradicting emotions and memories, and if it has other qualities, to discover those with a quick survey among type designers. So far I’ve learned that many of you didn’t understand its meaning, but it didn’t matter, because you liked how it sounds.
Which reminds me of Google, which derives from a deliberate misspelling of Gogol, the Russian mathematician. It’s a historic source with no meaning whatsoever to the average Google user today.
“The number of things applicable to something” seems a pretty good description to me, for a type publishing house interested in a fresh approach, looking for variety and evolution. That said, with a name coming from a rather dry source, I think the spirit and life needs to come out of the product.
[Sorry for the off-topic. So I'll comment on the topic, too: My first impression about the name was, 'Hu? Ari..ty? Why not Aritype? What's the pronunciation? Maybe it could be "ari-tye", as in "type"?'. Just a silly thought, so don't worry
The typeface is quite brilliant if you ask me. At least it works very nicely on my Mac. Good hinting will be vital to make it work equally well on Windows, but I'm guessing you've already considered that.