34. Raging Storm
+ corporate typography and a completed challenge
Hey everyone! This will be a long one, so I’ll keep the intro short: summer in Japan is over (finally) and I’m moving to Tokyo (super excited!). Also make sure to read this post in your browser to see all of it.
Fresh off the grid
I really enjoyed detailing my process for the layout of my entry in the Appendix N Jam, so I’m doing it again for my new FIST module, Raging Storm on Merlin Five. And this time I’m actually writing while doing the layout!
Raging Storm on Merlin Five
For those who don’t know, FIST is a TTRPG where players act as mercenaries for a secret agency, the titular FIST, during an alternative version of the Cold War where paranormal phoenomena1 are real, and they’re just one of your problems. While I’m a big fan of this premise, I’m an even bigger fan of the game’s art direction and layout: the whole book is in black and white and its text is mostly set in two columns except for a few stylish exceptions. It sounds simple enough but the precision and sleekness of the execution give the book its charm. I actually already gave the style a go with another adventure, Rainforest Rampage. But enough preamble, let’s move on to the layout!
At this stage I’m almost done with the writing, I’m just missing a few random tables (which I always write last because I struggle so much with them). The current manuscript is just short of 2000 words and I want this to be formatted in A5, so if we count about 450 words per page that’s about 5 pages. But I want to add a cover, some illustrations and give the text space to breathe so we’ll aim for 8 pages.
For the typeface, I’m going to keep it even simpler than the rulebook and only use one: Basier Square by Atipo. This one has sort of become my default for sans serif, and I often look to other typefaces from this foundry for various projects. I usually set my body text around 9pt, but because I’m doing this in A5 and I want two columns of text, I need a smaller size, so we’re going with 8pt. To make up for the smaller size, I make sure the leading is wide enough to maintain legibility: 130% of the text height, so 10,4pt. Divided by 2, that gives us a baseline spacing of 5,2pt. Now comes the first struggle: left aligned or justified? I know justified gets a bad reputation but I really like how cold it makes the text look, which feels very appropriate when trying to evoke the ruthless context of Cold War espionnage.
There are a few tricks to making a justified block of text look nice: reducing the word and character spacing and a correctly set hyphenation.2 But the main factor remains your column width: the longer your lines of text the more likely you are to avoid rivers (consecutive spaces running down a paragraph). Let’s see if I can fix that when setting up the margins.
There’s not much to say about the margins, but the 8 columns are more interesting. As I’ve explained multiple times during these write-ups, having more columns allows you more flexibility with your text and graphics. Here especially I want to reproduce what FIST does on some spreads: a wider column of text and a sidebar for illustrations and notes (5 and 3 columns instead of 4 and 4). And looking at it now, I think the justified text works. So now it’s time to format all that text.
I now have all the paragraph styles I need, and I know more or less how everything is going to look. I also notice I need to add some text between the “LVL -2” and “Drilling rig” headers (it’s usually recommended to avoid having 2 headers in a row). But now I can start moving those blocks of text around and give this adventure some personality.
Alright we’re getting somewhere! As I mentioned, I’m taking advantage of my 8-columns grid to vary the width of my columns of text depending on the kind of information on the page: a wide single column for the intro, two columns for a compact spread where all related information is kept together, a wide single column for the boss enemy, two columns for the statblocks and once again two columns for some additional info (although at this point I’m tempted to make it a wide single column). I’ve also added page numbers and blocked out space for potential illustrations. But first, the cover.
I wanted to do something inspired by the Jaws poster with a monstrous fish looking up towards an oil rig caught in a storm. But after struggling to find an image of an anglerfish I could use, I resorted to a previous idea: following the schematics look of the cover of the rulebook (when I said I was a fan of the design I meant it). The title font is Dopeneck by Brandon Nickerson, a familiar designer for long time subscribers. Its chunky look and rounded corners add some industrial flavour. Now I just need to get back to the interior to add the illustrations and edit the text where needed. But you’ll have to check the final release to see them!
These write-ups are a great opportunity for self-reflection and noticing where my process can be improved, but if there are specific points you’d like me to focus on, please reach out and let me know what you’re most interested in!
What’s your type(face)?
I’ll preface this by saying I’m aware “evil corporation” is redundant, as I’ve yet to hear about a fully benevolent corporation, but I included “evil” to make sure everyone got the vibe. Let’s now look at some “evil corporation logos”. There are two lenses through which we can interpret this theme: fiction and reality. First, the boring one.
Looking at some of the most important corporations in the world3 we can see a clear pattern: a simple sans serif with very little personality, and a lot of blue. This makes sense as corporations want to cause the least amount of friction to have as many people as possible identify with their brand. The darker shades of blue are also often associated with neutrality and professionalism (hence why you see a lot of navy blue suits in offices). This effort to seem approachable and sort of friendly definitely clashes with the scandals these corporations went through in recent years (or still ongoing for some of them). How does fiction adapt these principles?
As you can see these logos for fictional corporations tend to follow the same rules with more colours and a lot more personality: the wide and imposing W/Y of Weyland-Yutani, the trust-inspiring sans serif of LUMON or the bold red serif font of NERV. The extra dose of personality is easily explained: it’s fiction, and these are supposed to represent values and ideas the audience should understand easily. Also, these come from settings where capitalism is completely unregulated and subtlety is no longer a concern (e.g. Weyland-Yutani’s uplifting and hopeful tagline being in quotation marks).
From these examples we can infer a spectrum for how corporations logos look: from “way too normal” to “obviously evil”. I’ll let you place the typefaces from the selection on the spectrum.
Deck Seven: the bevelled angles make the letters look like nuts (not the food), hence a very industrial and sort of utilitarian typeface.
Erasmusbrug25: the sharp angles and cutouts give this display font an immediate cyberpunk but also menacing look, perfect for a tech company promising it won’t steal your data.
Tulpen One: a very elegant look, an ideal fit for a lifestyle brand selling you totally-not-weird food supplements.
Advent Pro: I like this one because it has just enough personality to be noticeable but not jarring, and it’s also very versatile. It comes in a variety of weights but also as a variable font, meaning you can easily adapt it for any kind of industry.
And as a bonus for the delays, two additional typefaces (but these are paid):
Liber Sans: this one goes on the “way too normal” end of the spectrum. It has a few eye-catching characters (check the “y” and “g”) and enough weights to work in a lot of context.
Central Display: a super-stylish typeface with wide glyphs, over-extended strokes and serifs that give it a maximalist look worthy of a cyberpunk high-fashion brand.
Creative fuel
This month I only have the final entries of the Alphabet Superset: X, Y and Z. I couldn’t find albums starting with these letters so I treated them as bonus weeks for albums I couldn’t pick previously: “Days as Echoes” by Misha Panfilov Sound Combo, “Headplate” by KUMO99 and “!” by Lara Somogyi. I’m very proud of all the designs I made, so I plan on making a zine to show them all together. More on that next month!
That’s it for this month, thanks for reading!
Yep that’s the plural form, had to Google it.
I use this video whenever I forget the actual values (too often).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue
This is the good stuff that makes my brain go brrrrr. Fine work!