Typography Games

In the week two unit, I learned how important an element typography can be when constructing a message. As part of our weekly assignment, we were asking to play some online typography games. I tired all five games and will discuss my thoughts on each.

• Shoot the serif.

This game made me nervous! The objective of this game is to shoot (click & select) serif fonts out of a block of letters. At first I was doing great, but as the time allotment became smaller and smaller, I began to panic. I did not do so well in the later rounds. I still felt this game was helpful in identifying different kinds of serif fonts and seeing how they look in comparison to various sans-serif fonts.

• Type Connection
  

I was a little skeptical of this one based on the description, but I actually found it really interesting. Some of the background information provided on fonts helped explain different things they are often used for. I guess I never spent much time thinking about the finer details of fonts, but there’s a lot to take in. I also made a successful pairing in the end, so I was pretty happy about that.

• Poster Letters

I more or less just looked at the letters and thought about which ones I recognized. To be honest, I didn’t want to spent the time to try to fill everything in. However, I think this game really emphasizes how iconic different typefaces and letterings can be. Some were instantly recognizable to me by just one letter.

• Type War

While I do see the potential value of this game, it got redundant very quickly for me. It gave me the same letter 3 times in a row once and at that point I was kind of done playing it. I did appreciate that there wasn’t a timer on the game so you could look at each letter and think about your response before selecting anything.

• Kern Type
  
  

This was probably my favorite game. I found it frustrating at first, but after a couple levels, I began to get the hang of it and I actually got three perfect scores in a row! It was very satisfying to get the kerning (spacing) right…even if it took me an embarrassing amount of time to do so.