Meijer, a midwestern original and typography example

Disclaimer: This is a make-up post for the week of March 4th. 

A bit of background: I grew up in a small town called Belding in Michigan.  The next town over (about 10 minutes away by car), is Greenville Michigan.  This is where the Meijer Superstore was born.  In Michigan there are Meijer stores all over the place.  The town I lived in was between the birthplace of the store, and another town Ionia to the south which also had a Meijer store.  Imagine my happiness when I moved to Champaign-Urbana and found that I can still shop in such a familiar store.  It's the only place I can find a few specific items that are mainly sold in my home state (Faygo soda! Granted I can only get 1 flavor in diet in a 20 oz bottle in the store's gas station...but it's more than I can get anywhere else in this state!!).  Yes, I love Meijer.  I'm weird.  I'm aware of this.

Some time in the early 2000's, Meijer underwent somewhat of a typographical makeover.  For most of my lifetime growing up in the Great Lakes State, the Meijer logo looked like this:

Their color scheme was mostly just red.  Now with the newer logo (shown above), their color scheme is a mixture of red and blue. 

About the type:
According to Whatthefont.com, the older logo is closest to Dragon TS-Bold however, the dots on the i and j are the wrong shape and the serifs on the Es are wrong.  The newer logo appears to be Linotype-tetria-black. 

How it's used:
It's the graphic identity for the store.

Where it can be seen:
In Champaign or Urbana on the store and within the store.  Also on any printed materials put out by the store.
Fun Fact: My father used to work for a company that had a contract with Meijer and used to do the land surveys for land where new stores were going to be built in the Midwest. 

Week 4 - Paul Rand

In the process of looking up images for a project in my ART 223 class, I came across a graphic designer named Paul Rand.  I found a few images that I thought were intreguing, but this one is one that stood out to me. 

The different letter designs and colors seem to emulate a sense of playfulness.  I believe that this is used as an advertisement for an IBM event of some kind.  I found this image in the ArtStor database. 

Week 1 - Student Activites Poster

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with the student activities group that created this poster. I respect their group and their members. I'm just using these images as an example of typography that could be improved upon and to give an honest critique.



The Font:
The font of the logo is ShowcardGothic. The it appears to be a modern, sort of funky font. It's being used to advertise for the particular student group and I assume it's used to grab the eye of someone walking by. As far as it's use, it seems to be fine, but I don't like the use of black on such a dark green color. The color of the background should be lighter, or the color of the text should be brighter.



My sticking point with this poster is that in this image, you can see a close-up of some important points. Reasons why students should join the group. I understand they were using for emphasis, but really a blocky, bold, funky font like this should be restricted to logos and large headings. A cleaner sans-serif font with possibly brighter colored text or a brighter colored background should go here instead.

I saw this in the C-wing of Parkland, I've passed by it many times, and it always kind of confused me. I couldn't read much of the text well, so I had to get very close to it in order to read it properly

With a few modifications, I think the poster could be much improved.