Ya Dig - Makena Roberts

Source and Object Description:These are the T shirts we made for our volleyball team called "Ya Dig". We tried to make the YA look like the handle to a shovel while the word DIG was in the bottom part of the shovel and the rest is made to look like sand/dirt.
Typeface Description: The font is sans serif and all caps. Its supposed to look like a stencil cut out. 
How does it enhance the message? The typeface works in all caps. It is a team shirt so its easily seen from far away and the DIG stands out and is the first thing youll notice. 
How will this influence my work? It shows you how fun it is to play with letter forms to create objects if need be. Also playing around with negative and positive space.

Tortillas and Lullabies - Sean Falcon

Source: part of a small collection of worldly books in the upstairs living room at home.
Typeface classification: The cover design features both serif (English) and sans serif (Spanish) fonts. The serif font reminded me of one I had seen recently called Mrs Eaves while the sans serif looks like an altered geometric typeface.
Description: The book is obviously aimed towards children but is neat in that it offers the lullabies in English and Spanish while adhering to the same format as the cover design - could be seen as educational as a means to teach both languages to younger audiences.
How it enhances the message: The typography is very neatly arranged on the page to aid in a clear representation of the text: the layout lends itself to making the text just as important as the art depicted among the pages and seems like a natural way to guide young readers along.
Influence: Its funny how we often overlook the simplicity of things when designing: we try to over elaborate on a particular facet of our design when reducing it down to its bare essentials goes a long way. Not having seen this book in probably 20 years, it was refreshing to see such simplicity portrayed throughout the typographical choices and that is one thing that I'll definitely take into consideration for future work.

To Kill a Mockingbird -Sam Popham

Source and Object Description: A book from my bookshelf. The book is an award winning, well beloved story that can be read by all audiences and in my case owned for high school English class but very well cherished.
Typeface Description: The font is sans serif and all caps. The small circle features smaller, lowercase, italicized typeface that works well with the uppercase font. There is lots of spacing between letters.
How does it enhance the message? The typeface matches well with the tone of the book. The story talks about the contrasting feelings of injustice and honor and by using white on black for the title one can feel that sharp contrast. The spacing and the sans serif give off the seriousness of the books content as well. It's not too formal with it's lack of serifs so as to appeal to the more modern viewer. The colors all work well together as also.
How will this influence my work? I really enjoy the color scheme and the simplicity of the design of the typeface as well as the entire layout of the cover. I hope to learn more about simplicity in design with typefaces. I admire the use of fonts in an easy to read format for the reader. The hierarchy is very obvious as well. I would love to design a cover like this myself!

The Little book of Lots of Sudoku- Morgan Thomas

Source: Fed-ex on University Drive book display
Typeface Classification: There is a diversity of serif italic, small caps serif, and hand done illustrative type
What is it?:  "The Little book of Lots of Sudoku" The introduction is by Will shorts.  St Martins Pr Special is the publisher.  The title says it all.  There is just a bunch of sudoku in this.
Analyze the Piece:  There are sudoku books in every book store, but none of the ones I have seen have the type treatment of "The Little Book of Lots of Sudoku".  The combination of the small caps and the italic serif type have a regal, elegant feel.  The type treatment also gives the words a certain Hierarchy.  The small caps are less important words and the italic typeface holds the weight of the title of the book.  The hand type for the word "lots" also has an interesting illustrative quality that is reminiscent of the Beatles yellow submarine movie.  This portrays the playfulness of puzzles and sudoku.
How will this influence my work?:  The hand type is absolutely refreshing.  I definitely would like to try making a bulky, detailed type for an up and coming poster project.  I never thought to do an Italic swash with small caps.  I need to work on hierarchy and this has given me inspiration to use typefaces with more options and are well designed.

Slab Serif Stress Relief- Andrea Johnson

This is a slab serif font that I found on my roommate's hand lotion bottle. At first, the type on the bottle seems rather boring, but with a closer look you'll find that the terminals on the letters have been altered. I think it works very nicely with the style of the bottle; the font is simple and nice, and the terminals mimic the leaves on the bottle. This will influence my work by helping me realize that making small changes to pre existing fonts can give a unique but elegant result.