Exploring the role of typography in documentary videos: a case study on mineral resources

This study explores the capabilities of typography to enhance communication and audience engagement in documentary videos, specifically regarding education content on mineral resources. The stimulus comes from the growing contribution of visual communication towards effective presentation of complex environmental information. Although it is widely applied in multimedia, typographic design's contribution to learning and memory of messages delivered via video-based learning has not been exhaustively researched. This research addresses the deficiency of typographic design rules in documentary settings, particularly for scientific and environmental content. Using a qualitative content analysis method, the paper investigates five documentary clips on YouTube that utilize motion and animated typography. Each cut was analysed for typographic aspects such as font, size, colour, alignment, and motion effects with particular focus on how they contribute to the clarity of the message, visual sequence, and understanding by the audience. The findings were recorded systematically in screenshots and coding matrices. The results indicate that thoughtful typographic design, especially through aligned planning and motion effects can significantly enhance viewer understanding and recall. This means typography is not merely a stylistic component but also a functional one in effective educational media. The findings encourage more systematic, context-dependent applications of typography in motion graphics and suggest future research in interdisciplinary visual communication methods.