Advertising

Read All About It! NYT Goes to Turkey

By Delphine Hirasuna | October 8, 2009September 4, 2014

This one-minute commercial was produced by Leo Burnett to announce the launch of the Turkish edition of The New York Times. Actual pages from the first edition of the newspaper were used to “wallpaper” the façade of recognizable landmarks in Manhattan and Istanbul, giving viewers a quick tour from New York Harbor to the Bosphorus. Notice how the financial pages were used to create the NYSE and Wall Street and the entertainment pages Times Square, etc. The clever ad was directed by Quba Michalski, with 3D and compositing by Dreambox.

Typography

Making Blackletter Hot!

By Delphine Hirasuna | September 2, 2009September 4, 2014

In an age when the rest of the world has given up on Blackletter typography, also known as Old English or Fraktur lettering style, newspapers haven’t. Newspapers began using Blackletter for their nameplates around the mid-19th century because it printed dark and dense, important when printing on crude groundwood paper. The letter forms also had an air of authority and incontestable truth about them, as if taken from ancient manuscripts hand-drawn by scribes or a bible set with movable type carved by Johannes Gutenberg himself. The Chicago Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and The New York Times are just a few newspapers that set their name in stylized Blackletter. Interestingly, the New York Times “T” Magazine, the ultimate word on contemporary fashion and design, did not try to buck tradition and choose a 21st century font when it began publishing in 2004. Instead, it let artists and designers reimagine its Blackletter “T” logo in their chosen medium. For many of us, the “T” art has become the favorite feature of the magazine.

Information Graphics

AIGA Design for Democracy Takes On Credit Cards

By Delphine Hirasuna | July 31, 2009September 4, 2014

If you have something to hide, design badly and write poorly. Set the text in small type, no leading and wide measure, and use mind-numbingly dull legal language. This approach all but screams, “We don’t want you to read this, but we are required by law to tell you.”

Whether intentional or not, this is the impression given by credit card issuers when disclosing fees and terms. Cardholders who don’t immediately throw out these “envelope stuffers” are often stunned to read about a plethora of penalties, hidden fees and compounded interest. What’s more, the majority of card issuers also claim the right to increase APR or change credit terms “at any time for any reason.”

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