Is it supposed to encourage them?

M.

just present the facts. starts off "a party drug, an assailant on our youth, a revered part of religious ceremonies, and now a new controversial therapy for sufferers of AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, and other chronic illnesses. Pot is the most widely used illegal drug..."

Sounds ok to me

M

Arnold B

Arnold B

ITC Ziggy - very mystery machine-esque/

I know this is a bit self-promoish, but I've made one that might be suitable. It's called Arkudius and you can see it at my site. (http://www.kennmunk.com/fonts) It has two different g's which a word like 'giggles' should (at least) have.

Am desperately searching for my copy of Reefer Madness to see what was used on the packaging... either that, or some sort of sensational 50s juvenile delinquent movie poster sort of thing...

oops, perhaps that wouldn't be taking this all-too-serious matter seriously. Be sure to convey the horror that follows eating an entire bag of oyster crackers and a frozen pizza!
Why does everybody else get the fun projects?

Beatnick Outline... ;-)

haha, thanks for the suggestions guys. ken i like your fonts. i was also thinking storm's cobra with its blurred letters could be workable. i'll let you know how it goes.

I think you should use a font that gets progressively "loose", like Adobe's Reliq, or maybe something from Letterror.

hhp

oh, i really like your reliq idea. what do you mean by "gets loose"? the way the letters get jumpy around the baseline? is that like letters "letting loose"?

Just some font that has different -but compatible- styles (or ideally an MM axis) where things get less "regular", like alignment, weight consistency, etc.

hhp

Blur by Neville Brody

Cathode by Paula Grech.

But I suggest these only for titling/headline stuff. I doubt people would read it if the thing were set in its entirety this way.

oh those are good too, blur especially. the body text is being set in frutiger.

Is this a humorous look at it? Maybe I misunderstood. If this is a serious look at it, I really might not use too many, if any, silly fonts. I agree with Joe.

Yes but... isn't it also maddeningly difficult to get college students to pick something up, let alone read it? Besides, the "the munchies and giggles" as a title (guess I should ask, is that for real?) doesn't do much to help set a serious tone.

A lot of the drug info around has such a cheesy, almost patronizing feel to it, like a bad After School Special or bible tract. Uninviting to open, destined for the waste basket. Or, worse, some student will pick it up and read from it aloud for giggles while getting stoned.

Communicating this sort of info is actually a major challenge.

On third thought, as opposed to just second thought, I think a little bit of blur, for instance, could go a long way. Tracy you are right that in order To get the MTV crowd to read a pamplet it has to look MTV. For the Most part anyway.

interesting point. type reflects values (especially to people who study it, design it, are obsessed with it, and associate strongly with it) and therefore designers are responsible for making type choices that most accurately convey the message being presented.

that gets interesting when multiple messages are being presented; in this case the issue

Andrea said...
i was also thinking storm's cobra with its blurred
letters could be workable.

IMHO, any opportunity to use something from Storm is
a good one. and Cobra is a fairly readable type as well,
just in case you want to use it for some text. it gives
you that slightly-too-relaxed kind of feeling -- not
exactly light-hearted, maybe just an honest reference.

I think you should base your design on this classic of the marijuana pulp fiction genre.

I think you should base your design on this classic of the marijuana pulp fiction genre.

It ain't hay, man. Don't be tempting me with stuff like this, John!! I nearly clicked on the 'add to cart' button twice.

I'll go downstairs and ask my neighbours what they think. Judging by the smell in my apartment (and they live two floors down) they've been smoking for about two hours and it's only 11:30 in the morning. I wonder what their apartment smells like.

Matha.

maybe you should point out if they keep smoking they'll end up looking like this guy: http://www.cannabis.net/assassin-of-youth.html

But they're feeding him with naked women!! That couldn't possibly dissuade anyone in the 21st century. Except for naked women, maybe.

M.

Matha, did your neighbors offer any useful insight into this?

At this stage I'm not sure they're very coherent

M.

If it's supposed to be an honest look at marijuana, won't
you be doing a public dis-service to saddle it down with
stereotypical references to the 60s or to glamorize it for
the sake of glamorizing it?

A challenge for sure, Andrea.

Perhaps you should portray that dichotomy of
perceptions typographically, rather than the
effects of the drug itself.