Print Interview: Name & Identity of Publication

Publication Name

In consideration of the publication’s name, I explored a range of potential titles which allude to, or otherwise directly reveal, the subject of the content to be featured - the interviews with G . F Smith, Pressision and Foilco. These are listed below:

The Past, Present & Future of Print - To the point.

The Power of Creative Print & Finishing - The subject of the interviews.

The Finishing Line - Alluding to the printing of a project being the final stage of the creative process, as well as finishing as a creative practice.

Printerview - A blend word of ‘Print’ & ‘Interview.’

Foil, Paper, Printers - A play on ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors,’ suggestive of their grouping as a three.

Life in Print - Representing the interviewees’ as professionals within/working closely with the print sector and the publication as a physical form capturing the lives of the interviewees via the content.

Publication Identity

After discussing the potential names for the   publication in critique, I decided on the title ‘Printerview.’

This title, a blend word of ‘Print’ & ‘Interview,’ is the most simple, direct indicator of the publication’s content. ‘Short and snappy,’ this title encapsulates the premise of the project in a single word that is spoken with great ease. 

It was suggested that the title be accompanied by a sub-title which lists the contributing interviewees, giving greater depth to the publication from first view via associative power (from the respective companies as industry leaders). I subsequently decided I would add the sub-title: 

‘In Conversation With G . F Smith, Pressision & Foilco.’

For the identity/title of the publication, I wanted to explore serif typefaces. By nature, serif typefaces are considered more decorative as a result of, of course the feature of serifs, as well as variant in line stroke, terminals (ball, tear-drop etc.), tails, and so on. Additionally, I see it that these character traits reflect a more conversational aesthetic, capturing the character of voice and tone of the interviewees.

While the publication in-part is a celebration of modern-day print and touches upon the future of the industry, I believe a serif typeface better reflects the history of print as a once-traditional practice, and the creative potentials it supplies; a minimalist serif typeface would fail to capture this as sympathetically. 

In exploring the serif typefaces, I was struck by the idea to use the tittles/dots of the two letter ‘i’ of ‘Printerview’ as an opportunity to further reflect the interview content of the publication, exchanging the standard diacritic dot mark above these in favour of single quotation marks, acting as a visual  representation of the publication context. Due to the nature of this classification of type, the quotation glyph appears as a dot with a curling swash, allowing the seamless exchange from dot to quote mark to subtly enhance the word-mark. 

The typefaces I explored are:

Athelas

Baskerville

Big Caslon

Bodoni XT

Century

Times New Roman

I believe typeface Century, originally designed in 1894, presents itself as the most visually balanced word-mark as a result of its crisp aesthetic, achieved through strokes ending in fine tapers, ball terminals and consistent serifs, which feature low stroke contrast and therefore create a less sharp and highly readable resolution. There is also greater cohesion between the quote mark glyphs used to ‘dot’ the ‘i’s and the tear-drop terminals of the other featured letters (r).