If you’ve been following me on twitter at all this week, you know that I’ve fallen off the typography deep end.  I’ve been working on the typography slides for the workshop at MIX and become, well, a little obsessed (and/or annoying depending on how long you’ve been in a room with me).

I’ll refrain from the barrage of links that is my twitter feed, but here are two videos that show the impact of type as a visual element.  Interestingly, the videos (as far as I know) are unrelated to one another but share a very similar retro aesthetic.

The first is from this guy and his whole portfolio is incredible, but this one stands out. Really amazing motion. What’s black and white and Helvetica all over? This.

Is there any meaning to the text? It isn’t clear to me if there, but it is interesting to see how individual words can have an impact. Our brains read fast and we can consume words almost like pictures so if you see a strong word like SPEED, it conjures emotion the same way an image might.

The second in a Nina Simone video.  The interesting thing to watch here is how the type is matched to qualities of the singer’s voice so that letterforms become very emotionally connected to qualities of the singing.