If NPR were a typeface....
Today we had another presentation of design iterations for the new NPR.org. Well, it was actually just for the new NPR.org homepage. The rest of the site templates will be worked out later. We're working on getting the homepage nailed down first. And trust me when I tell you that it is A LOT OF WORK.
Given this type-heavy project I'm tackling at work, along with the preparation I'm doing for the typography class I'll be teaching at MICA this semester, all I can think about these days is type. Baselines. Counters. Ascenders. Descenders. X-Heights. Serifs. Strokes. And as of today, about how these formal elements come together to tell a story. And not just because they give form to the spoken word, but also because they constitute an invaluable part of a piece's visual language. "Typography is the clothes that words wear," I read somewhere recently.
And speaking of garments for letters, one thing that came up in the discussion today was the need for a typographic system to consistently display the names of NPR radio personalities whenever they appear in a graphical format on the site. Say, Nina Tottenberg, Melissa Block, Carl Kassel, Corey Flintoff, Don Gonyea, Robert Siegel, or Terry Gross, to name a few. For all practical purposes, they are the collective voice of NPR. Individually, they have distinct personalities and styles, but as a whole, on a day-to-day level, they are the audible brand identity of National Public Radio. They tell stories, at both the micro and macro level. When you turn on the radio and hear any one of their voices at any given moment, if you're a regular listener of NPR, you will know – immediately – what you're listening to. If ever existed a humanist, audible logo, this collective NPR voice is it.
So, here's the question that I put forth to all you designer/NPR junkie types: how do you translate the audible to the visual? what is the macro-level story that NPR tells you? and, if NPR were a typeface, what would it be? I'd love to hear your thoughts….