Typography - Specimen Sheet

Assignment: Typeface designers have a long-standing tradition of creating “specimen sheets” of their new fonts so printers and designers can see them in action. A good specimen sheet shows the flexibility and expressive range of the typeface family while capturing its distinct spirit and tone of voice. A good specimen sheet also highlights the most unique functional aspects of the face and displays its full range of weights, styles, characters, and special glyphs in a wide range of sizes.

Create two 11 × 17 specimen sheets for one of the following typeface families: Gill Sans Std, Sabon LT Std, Helvetica Neue LT Std, Baskerville Ten OT, Futura Std, Clarendon LT Std, or Bodoni Std (all provided). The first specimen sheet must include: (1) the “style block” with many styles and weights represented and labeled. Keep in mind that the “style block” should utilize some kind of related text, like a quotation or poem, or a set of words that surround a topic relevant to the typeface’s character or purpose. It is a chance for the specimen designer to show off personal style, topical knowledge, or aesthetic taste. The second specimen sheet must include: (2) the full character set including ligatures, lining & oldstyle figures, small capitals, and (3) a sample text set at several sizes, weights, and line spacings (see examples below).

This assignment shows what can be done with just a single font. I decided to use Times New Roman because I absolutely hate the way it looks. This exercise show all the different way the font can look and I like most all there options I came up with. I used bold, italics, small caps, all caps, and narrow width in various combination. I considered using wide as well but I already had enough variables to do the entire poem without repeating anything. I found I really like how the all caps and the small caps lines look, they are very formal. The italics look almost fun and a tad playful in this font. I still really don't care for the normal plain version of the font, but it was an interesting exercise. I'll remember that changing these attributes really changes the font next time I'm looking for that perfect font for a project.