📘 'New York' Type Specimen Book

Overview

During my semester abroad at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia, I took a studio typography course. Our final project was to create a 28-page type specimen booklet on our chosen font in our assigned font family. My font family was 'traditional' and I decided to research the font 'New York' created by Apple.

Course & Duration

Deliverables

GRAP 2277: Introduction to Typography

Jul - Dec 2019

28 pages

Display 2000 words of chosen typeface

Programs

Skills

Adobe InDesign

Research, typography,

editorial design, graphic design

VIEW FINAL PROJECT ↓

BACKGROUND

Research

Going into this project, I hadn't realized that 'New York' was a brand new font created in 2019 by Apple Inc. This created some difficulty in the research process because I needed at least 2000 words in the final booklet.

I ended up spending a lot of time online trying to gather any information regarding 'New York', who specifically it was made by, the design process behind it, etc. In my luck, I found a document that gave me information regarding Apple's font family which included other fonts such as Geneva, Chicago, and Monaco. The document also provided details on the type specifications.

DESIGN PROCESS

Identifying Grids

One of the most important requirements was being able to apply grids to our layouts. I noticed from browsing from Apple's website that they have lots of white space within their branding and I wanted to demonstrate that through wide margins and have freedom with multiple columns.

Screen Shot 2020-01-20 at 5.26.18 PM.png

Chosen Specifications

Booklet Size: A5

Margins: 0.625in

Bleeds: 0.125in

Columns: 7

Gutter: 0.125in

Colour Palette

#000000

#3487B9

#000000

During the research process, I thought about what colour palette I wanted to use. I spent time browsing through Apple's website and found that they mainly used black, grey, white, and blue.

With the following information in mind, I used black and white for my main colours and then blue as an accent.

Edit, critique, edit, critique..

I presented my designs to classmates and professors to gather some criticism. After each critique day, I continued to make edits until I was satisfied and got great feedback. The design drafts were displayed on-screen and I ended up printing them physically to see the layouts in real-life size.

In example #1, I was told to change the bottom text of 'acfry' because although it was relevant in the paragraph, the text doesn't add anything special to the page as it looks plain. In my final designs, I removed it.