Typography: four words that express their own meaning beyond simple letters

After spending time learning more about the role of typography in learning this week, I've participated in an activity to design words to express their meaning. I really love typography. And I especially loved researching and learning more about it this week.

These words fit with a inter-personal communications unit of instruction I am developing for my children. They're younger children, and not sophisticated in terms of the topic. As such, these words should be helpful to help them understand their meaning, because they are colorful and graphical, like pictures or cartoons. Instead of simply being text representing a word, they convey other meanings. As Lohr describes in our textbook, "Instructional typography is defined as the art and science of using individual letters, words, and passages of text to convey an instructional message." (page 242)

For example, criticism is red like anger or spilled blood; the word looks aggressive and pointed, with even an arrow to point blame. It's not bold or capitalized because it's more sly, possibly back-handed. 

Defensiveness is puffed up high, like raised hackles or pride, and large to be defensive so no aggression gets by. Alternating crenels epitomize the defense of a castle. It doesn't shirk, it doesn't stand down, so it's capitalized. The close tracking (as opposed to kerning, which on page 231 Lohr defines as space between individual characters and I realized is different than the uniform character spacing which is tracking) indicates closed-in ranks. And black gives nothing away, not revealing its hand. 

Contempt is green like poison. It unsubtly oozes and drips with inflicted pain. It's often not measured or even-handed, so it's is up and down, and like criticism, it stabs and lashes out ... but in sort of a rounded frowny way that underpins its sad malevolence. 

Finally, Stonewall represents exactly what it is: walling others off. It's a specific type of defensiveness, not expansive like our other general example defensiveness, but rather small, compact, because it wishes to be invisible and absolutely not interacted with.

In summary, I tried to be conscious of cueing emphasis by using variety in a way that was not all "bold". Lohr describes how cueing can be confusing if used too much (page 242). These words are not meant to be used together in the same sentence so it can be difficult to assess how it is not all bold and attention-grabbing, but still, my attempt was to not let each one be big or all caps shouting or the like. For example, criticism is more subtle. Stonewall is diminutive. In fact, as a user test I asked someone if the words were overly competing one with another and I was told "no" without any other critique, so I kept the image as is. I am satisfied the words each do a decent job conveying more meaning to my children-students than if the words were simply expressed in plain text, that each conveys an instructional message to help them understand the meaning of the word that is greater than if the words were simply plain letters.

Lohr, L. (2008). Creating graphics for learning and performance: Lessons in visual literacy (Second ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill.