Typographic Portrait

I found some really creative pieces online which helped inspire me when it came to creating a typographic portrait of my own.

My first attempt was to create a piece with the coloured gradient.

Vodka Label

VODKA REGIONS

Eastern Europe is the homeland of Vodka production. Every country produces Vodka and most also have local flavoured specialities.

Russia, Ukraine and Belarus produce the full range of Vodka types and are generally known to be the leaders in Vodka production.

Poland produces and exports both grain and potato based Vodkas, most of the high quality brands are produced in pot stills.

Sweden has recently developed a substantial export market for its straight and flavoured wheat based Vodka.

Western Europe has local brands of Vodka wherever there are distilleries. The base for these Vodkas can vary from grains of differing countries including grapes and other fruits in winemaking countries such as France and Italy.

The US and Canada produce non flavoured Vodkas, both from various grains and from molasses.

Asia has a small amount of local Vodkas, the best coming from Japan.

HISTORY OF VODKA

The Russians firmly believe that Vodka was created in their land. Commercial production was established by the 14th century. In 1540 Czar Ivan the Terrible took a break from beheading his enemies and established the first government Vodka monopoly. Distilling licenses were handled out to the boyars and all other distilleries were banned. Vodka production became a massive part of Russian society, the Czars maintained test distilleries at their country palaces where the first experiments in multiple redistillations where made. In 1780 a scientist invented the use of charcoal filtration to purify Vodka.

By the 18th and well into the 19th century the Russian Vodka industry was probably the most technologically advanced industry in the nation. New types of stills and production techniques from Western Europe were eagerly imported and utilized. Under a 1902 law, "Moscow Vodka," a clear 40% ABV rye Vodka made with undistilled water and without added flavourings was established as the benchmark for the Russian Vodka.

Vodka production in the current Russian Federation has returned to the pre-revolutionary pattern. High quality brands are once again being produced for the new social elite and export, while the popularly priced brands are still being consumed.

Below are some of old Russian Vodka labels used on the bottles.

Below are some of the more current innovative Vodka labels, research shows that the more innovative and eye catching the design is the better the sales figures the Vodka will have.

The Vodka I have chosen to rebrand is Vodkat, the current label design is shown below.

I did some sketches to come up with ideas for the label, as the name of the product is Vodkat I tried to incoporate a picture of a cat into the logo.

I then used these drawings and developed them using photoshop and placed them on a bottle to show how the label will appear.

The picture above shows my final design.

Tracking/Kerning

Kerning and Tracking are two typographical terms, they both refer to the adjustment of space between characters.

Kerning is the adjustment of space between character pairs. For example some pairs of letters create awkward spaces making the word look off center so kerning adds or subtracts space between letters to allow the text to be read easier. Kerning is generally used when large font size is used such as in headings or words in all capitals. Depending on the font and the actual characters used automatic kerning may be enough for most publications.

Tracking is different from kerning as it is the adjustment of space for groups of letters or entire blocks of text. We use tracking to change the overall readability of the text in order to make it more open or dense. Tracking can be applied to all text or to some selected parts. Selective tracking can be used to squeeze more characters into a line to sace space or prevent a few words running onto a new page or column.

I got the pictures from google images.
I got information on tracking and kerning from the following websites:
http://www.wikipedia.com/
http://www.ucertify.com/
http://www.ehow.com/

Good/Bad Type

Some examples of bad font I came across while researching online.

Some Good type I came across while researching online.