Poem Typesetting Graphic Design Coursework
On the Pulse of the Morning by Maya Angelou
Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, and into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
Challenge
Using no more than two font families from those available for free from Google Fonts, set this verse from Maya Angelou in a hope-inspiring fashion.
Rationale
Since the client desired the reader to feel hopeful, I did a quick google image search for the word “hope” as a form of market research. I found that the two most common treatments were using a crisp, clean, sans serif font or using a playful, yet clean script. As such, I chose Cocktail Shaker as the script type face because it is cursive but not heavily ornamented so it remains quite easy to read. I chose to complement that script with the sans-serif, Houschka Pro. A key concern for me being that the sans-serif keep with the roundness and waviness of both the script font and the verse itself. Houschka Pro has nice symmetric curves, open counters, and round tittles.
Critique
Given more freedom of font choices I might have selected a different sans-serif font that had the same roundness of Houschka Pro but perhaps a bit more flow feeling to it.