Design Principles - Font Family: Change in Font

Originally the font chosen to modify was called Apple Chancery. However after working with a few letters it soon became apparent that no pattern could be kept when it came to modifying it. The font was hard to work with and posed to many problems, it was clear to see it wouldn't form a nice typeface. The font was then changed to Times New Roman as it gave more possibilities to explore. 

Above shows my original font Apple Chancery. From this you can see it was a Script, Sable font.

Below shows the adjustments made to the letter 'x' to see how it would practically work. Because the letter has different line widths it really affected how much could be cut off or how the end of the letters could look.

Design Principles - Font Family: Stone / Sable / Bone / Lead / Wood / Silicone

The first task was to print of ABCXYZ in upper and lower case in the font that we feel is the best example for each of last weeks categories. The categories were as follows:

• Stone - Normally neat serifs as when carving letters into stone you couldn't go directly in you needed to slope in from an angle.
• Wood - Thick chunky letters that normally have serifs that are equally chunky.
• Sable - Brush strokes that can lead to a fine point from a larger size as less pressure is put on the brush.
• Bone - Thinner letters with serifs that are normally cut at a precise angle.
• Lead - San serifs that would have been finely cut from metal for letter pressing etc...
• Silicone - Computer generated fonts that do not have a historical background, that is not to say they are not historically inspired.
 



Sable



Bone

Silicone

Stone

Wood

Lead

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The next activity was to choose one of the letter forms and modify it to make a new font. Below shows the chosen font and then how it has been modified by removing some of the script features to tone it down but keeping and even adding serifs so it remains unique. The font create in now a light font. The next challenge will be to work with this and create a Bold, Regular and Italic versions.

Brief 3 - Alphabet Soup/ Typeface: Final Outcome

On the right is the final outcome for the Typeface project. Overall the letterforms have worked well by portraying his character and the chosen glyphs support this: The exclamation mark and question mark are necessaties as they provide an essence of sarcasm and his outgoing side. The more than and less than arrows long with the pound sign link back to the idea of being money orientated, working a lot  and wanting to be in the black. the astric is meant to symbolise his need for accuracy with the idea being that and astric is used to draw someones eye to correct something or add more information in later on. 

On the left you can see the letters up close where the concept of loops around the letter really shows. The one problem encountered whilst creating this type face was that when it was practiced on a separate sheet of paper it the letter form was a lot bigger, when it came to sizing it down the pen couldn't be sized down as well so the lines are thicker than wanted. However it doesn't look noticeable and still as a whole works effectively.

Design Practice: Type Journal 2 - Type on Walls

 I absolutely love this piece of typography as a very simple and sophisticated restaurant sign. The simple san serif font looks great with the kerning adjusted so that the letters are further apart. This makes it easier to read and it also stands out from a distance.

It makes a change from all the signs printed and stuck. The direct paint to the wall not only adds character from where the bricks show through but also catch your eye as it is a different but not overpowering way of presenting type. The slightly darker complimentary colour around the right and bottom of the piece makes the letters stand

out from the background. The white lining around the blue matches the lettering and gives a sense of unity.

This typeface would be great for minimal pieces of work where the facts and maybe a simple illustration are laid out. Nothing to  fancy but at the same time very elegant, the simplicity makes it neat and feel almost like a treat.

Brief 2 - Alphabet Soup/ Illustrator: Fixing Problems

                 

 As shown above the 'G' has been modified so that the end doesn't just trail off but infact curls back around to be inline with the edge of the bowl. This works a lot better as the letter looks complete and finished. The thickness of the curve hasn't changed but yet looks so much better just by editing the end.

 

The 'M' has been adjusted so the inside is more curved , it now follows the outer outline rather than cutting straight across. There is still a difference in the size between the left and right section and if I get more time this is something I will edit out to make it more equal. However it looks a lot better now than it did. 

 

The 'H' looks a lot better than it did as now the chunkier bit matches the same size as the other letters. The top part still seems straight however so if more time is available this will be edited to form a smoother curve. 

Brief 2 - Alphabet soup/ Illustrator: Problems

One of the main problems encountered with Brief 2 was lining it up, even though it was initially created in a grid there was still struggle to make them look neat without being too small. As you can see on the right with the grid the alphabet looks wavy, there doesn't appear to be any order to it and some letters look larger than others. The P and the G stand out although their counters and bowls are the same size as the other letters, because they are raised to fit in the grid they look overly large. 

All the letters will have to be made smaller because in the end it will look better all in line and neat but smaller rather than larger and messier. 

Other problems encountered are things such as the curvature on some of the bowls. Its been a struggle to get the right angle and same line widths through out. For example the thicker part on the B is very different to the Q. This is something that will be fixed.

The next step is to line up all the letters and adjust the line weight so they are uniform.

Brief 3 - Alphabet Soup/Typeface: Last Modifications

After the crit it was useful to reflect on the feedback given. One of the main things that became apparent is that the new letter forms should be working around the basis of the chosen font. For this reason some of the ideas were scrapped and four were kept and adapted to the silhouette of Briem Akademi (STD Condensed).

The two preferable outcomes from the ideas shown above are the 'A' and the 'D' as both of these portray his character best.  The final alphabet and glyphs will be hand rendered onto tracing paper which will show how Johnathan's hand made style of work. 

The 'A' will probably work best because it shows the idea of being busy but from afar looking neat and organised.

The next step (shown above) is to format a grid that fits in a 4 by 8 ratio with all the letters in and 6 chosen glyphs. This will then make the process of hand rendering it a lot easier and quicker.

Brief 2 - Alphabet Soup/ Illustrator: Creating the Alphabet

As you can see by the first screen shot, I have started with the font Garamond in Illustrator. The first thing that was done was to highlight the text and create outlines. This turned the letter into an object which meant all its anchors were editable so parts could be deleted or added to. The bottom serif was removed so that the curve of the bowl followed up into the line of the stem. This is partially to create the shape of a musical instrument. 

 

Above shows how the curvature live was uneven, on the right it has been adjusted so it is thinner and neater. The whole stem has decreased in size to show the fine and precise element to my concept. Next the bowl and counter will be lifter up so the letter doesn't sink as much but rather sits straight on a baseline. I will then work with this technique for each letter.

Brief 3 - Alphabet Soup/Typeface: Development

To create a suitable alphabet it needed to incorporate our partners personality and characteristics in the way it was designed. One thing that is notable from the questions with Johnathan is that quite a few of his hobbies or attributes are linked or could be portrayed in the same way. For example he is a very busy person with work, university and socialising, this can be represented by the idea of movement - lots of lines or a busy letter. However this also could fit in with the idea of his fear of wasps, the lines representing the path the wasp takes.

On the right shows an initial idea of trying to present 'busy' and the sheer amount of work through the alphabet. A significant part to this design was trying to show that even though he is busy and has a lot going on he appears and composes himself as a calm and neat individual. The development on the right is playing around with using capitals only. Capitals are best because they are a statement, bold and can also relate loosely back to his love for caps.                                                                                                                                                                    

This idea developed further as it began to look at the slicing up of letters to show the break between the two sections; busy and neat and organised. The first A on the left is showing the idea of it being hectic under the service, the idea that no-one knows how busy he is. This developed further into actually slicing the letter to reflect the mechanical side of his personality. The letter is being constructed and deconstructed depending on your outlook

The next idea that followed looked at a combination of a few things: his love for driving to relax, his dream job of being an F1 driver and his love for mechanics. The first thought that comes to mind with the idea of driving was speed, this again links back to the idea of being busy and speeding around. Acrylic paint was used to create letters that looked like they were moving. Acrylic paint was the best material choice as it lends itself well to being smudged and creating movement. 

Then the idea of the car engine itself became the focus looking at taking aspects of the car engine and simplifying them down so that they could represent letters in their basic shape. The side view of a V engine worked well as a V and a Con rod works well as an I, however although this idea may work it doesn't lend itself well to the whole alphabet. The "i" on the far left works well as the letter is still legible and clear but shows the track well. This will definitely be an idea to continue.

   

Design Principles: Type Journal 1 - Type on Walls

On a recent trip to London, one place I visited was Brick Lane. It is really changing to a desired and 'cool' place to live. One thing I noticed was that there was typography everywhere! The streets were coloured with it. On the right is one great example where the whole side of the building was covered in type. I love the high contrast of bright colours to the black background. Usually so many colours wouldn't work in a piece of design let alone typography but here the black separates them and each letter in its own is a piece of art.

The typeface is a bold san serif and is repeated behind the letter down and to the right to form a drop shadow. The top and the right half of every letter is shaded in a different colour to give an almost 3 dimensional appearance.

Each letter is legible but the piece as a whole is unreadable as you can see from the lower picture. The kerning is quite large to allow for the drop shadow and the sheer size of the letters on the building make it hard to read from a distance especially because there is a building in the way on the other side of the street.

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On the other side of the street was the word 'pro' written in a very urban font. It has again got a use of bold bright colours and compliments the opposing piece. However this type is a serif bold font. The small counters and detailed bottom of the stems would make the letters hard to read if they were a smaller size. They look more like a piece of art than typography but this does definitely fit in with the area and brings the street to life. This typography attracts young adults that are maybe a bit 'edgy' or 'individual'.

Design Principles - Font Family: Starting Task

For todays Design Principles lecture we needed to have 3 different fonts printed in a 10 by 10cm square. We had to do this 6 times for each letter so we would have a variation on A B C a b c X Y Z x y z. Below shows the A's I chose for each type:

Catalina Script

Caecilia LT Std Roman

Optima

I chose each font because they were all different. Looking at slab serifs, san serif and script type. What each letter stands for is based on a group understanding of it, successful type is based on how clear the letter form is. However sometimes you only understand the letter in its context, for example if it is abstract then only when it is placed with other letters does it become clear what letter it is. There are 6 materials that have impacted on type. The first task was to organise our chosen fonts into categories that look at their original materials. The categories were as followed: 

1. stone
2. sable
3. bone
4. wood
5. lead
6. silicone

Going from left to right with the list this was the original order our group decided it was in. The problem we had was that we were looking at it chronologically about the development of each letter rather than focusing on the details that separated them. Once we realised what we were doing we changed the order to make it correct.

Now this is in the correct order, you can see the ones that were incorrect. We focused too much on having the serifs in stone when they are actually wood because they are chunkier and thick slab serifs compared to normal serifs. The bone would produce a very fine thin line which would be hard to make larger however the brush or sable can vary its brush strokes and make them thinner or larger depending on pressure.

Brief 1 - Visual Thinking/ Alphabet Soup: 10 Final Letterforms

Below shows my 10 final letter forms for alphabet soup. Next I will look at turning one of them into a full alphabet. Every letters threshold has been adjusted so that they are clearer and precise. However because some letters were created by paper stencils or layering it means the edges have become rougher than they should be, I will look into editing this but I quite like it how it is as it makes it feel more hands on.

The 'B' was playing around with the idea of a circuit, having a gap where something is missing or broken. The serifs have been removed and so has the varying widths so that the letter is all the same width. This shows how much impact the instrument has, it can be smooth with defined edges. It is very much a statement letter, the broken gap implies it has stopped suddenly and is still to be completed. Im not sure whether this would work as a body copy but it is definitely something I will explore.

To create the 'C' I layered black and white paper increasing in size so that each piece had an outline. The concept behind this was to show the many layers that an instrument has, the different depths and complexities behind a singular instrument. Equally I wanted it to portray the build up and layering of different instruments in an orchestra.

The 'D'  is to represent the intricute detail in instruments, I wanted to portray how an instrument can go from quite large to very small. The thicker width on the curves provides a dramatic contrast showing how the size can decrease very quickly. The serifs have been kept but only on the outer side of the stem so that it leads nicely to the next letter whilst still being showing a straight and prompt edge.

The 'I' above shows intricate detailing and was originally cut out using a scalpel. The idea was to show two things. Firstly how fine and detailed an instrument can be but also what affects can be made with an instrument such as a scalpel. I think the original affect has been lost since it has been scanned in because it isn't clear it has been cut out by hand, the edges just look rough and messy not hand rendered.

The 'I' above was a similar idea as the previous 'I' except basing the negative space on a violin. With this 'I' I didn't cut it out by hand but created the shape with a pen, this is why the edges of the letter (given they're not perfect) are a lot smoother. This letterform would potentially work well as a header copy but not as body text as it is too chunky and with the detail on in a small font it would blur the letters together.

The 'L' is focusing on keeping the serifs the same but drastically reducing the size of the stem and base line to provide a higher contrast. I wanted to focus on seeing how much of a difference the letter could take without looking out of balance. In the case of this 'L' I think the bottom of the letter works well but that the top bracketed serifs may be too heavy. However that isn't to say I don't like the concept behind this letter.

With the 'O' above I have gone off on a slight tangent looking at musical notes and playing around with tilting the axis so it represents a Semibreve. When looking at musical instruments the notes used are very closely linked and could almost be classed as an instrument to music in themselves. I do like this idea but I feel it may be a bit to similar to my 'D', however it is certainly an idea I will play around with.

The 'P' is aiming to show the thin lines of an instrument. With the lines being parallel it shows how everything has to be neat and inline to work together, it shows how every part is just as important as the next.

The 'Q' was looking at two things. Firstly the idea of a circuit being broken and missing an instrument, similar to the first 'b' but without adding colour to see if it would look better with just thicker outlines. I took the tail from an arial font because it was more exciting and I felt it better represented instruments and it has a smooth curve to it. 

The 'U' was playing around with extending the letters to show elegance and a slender shape. This was one of my original ideas representing a test tube as a scientific instrument. If I was to carry this further I would play around with potentially making the width smaller, if not all other then in set places like on one of the stems so that it would represent elegance more. Extending the gap between the x height and baseline whilst trying to use the least space possible horizontally would give the illusion of longer and thinner letters.