Since the anatomy of type lecture I have began to experiment with subtly editing the letter forms in Garamond. At first I didn't feel i had any initial ideas because everything that came to mind would change the letter too dramatically. However I've managed to look at modifying a few letters to get to grips with the brief, this will also be useful for the crit on Friday where i can ask for feedback.
Because I didn't know where to start i firstly began by looking at the shapes of instruments and tried to work the basic shape into the letter form.
Above left is the original J in Garamond, to the right of it is the modified J. I began by extending the curve around so it ended just before the centre, I removed the tail and replaced it with a serif. The thought behind this was focusing on a saxophone, I wanted the J to be smother and have a more defined curve. The end of the saxophone spreads out like the serif so I thought this would be a better comparison than the rounded tail. I will develop this more and look into changing the thickness so that it all matches or looks neater, I will also look into changing the width of the serif so that it is more prominent.
Above shows the P in Garamond and also the modified P (on the right). I started by extending the counter down so that the bowl would turn oval and the distance between the x height and base line would be lowered. I did this so that, like the J, the letter would give the appearance of being longer and thinner. I removed some of the weight of the side of the P to help with the illusion. I wanted the letter to subtly represent a trumpet or a brass instrument from a birds eye view. I will look into editing the head serif so that its angle helps to represent the trumpet.
Above shows the Garamond Q on the left and on the right my edited version. I didn't want to change too much to the Q as i felt its letter form was already appropriate for the word instrument. However i did change the tail to more of a styled serif so that it fitted in with the theme and looked more musical whilst remaining legible. The 'chunkier' serif ends work better with instrument when it comes to musical instruments because, to me, it represents the mouth piece on the brass instruments.
Above shows the 'I' both original and edited. I haven't done much to the modified 'I' just extended out the brackets so that they became longer than the top of the 'I'. I wanted this to show a musical stand as that is closely linked with the idea of instruments, I will definitely work on this and hopefully at the crit I will be able to get an outside opinion on possible options. I will also begin to looking into other types of instruments such as scientific or surgical.
With the U I wanted to look at other types of instruments, here i have began looking into instruments used in science. The U is meant to symbolise a test tube, to change it I brought the two stem sides of the U together and removed the inner section of the top serifs. This was so that it held the test-tube shape. Although this letter form hasn't had a drastic change it creates a completely new letter form.
With the V about I wanted it to represent a medical instrument, I began looking into different types of scissors or pliers which held a similar shape to a V. The swirled tails represent the handles. I wanted to play around with distorting the shape slightly and i think this letterform has done that. However thats not to say I am overly happy with this out come. I don't think it fits in well with the other letter forms and although the idea is good it could do with tweaking.
Above shows the A, the original idea behind this was looking at a bunsen burner stand as a scientific instrument. Im not overly happy with this outcome because the letter looks squished and the crossbar is too high which gives the impression the letter is bottom heavy. Hopefully the Crit will provide some useful feedback and ideas on what i can do to edit it.
On the C I have extended the brackets which have made the aperture smaller so that the space is enclosed. This has changed the shape into something that could potentially represent many instrument categories.
With the Y above I wanted to try and show a funnel as a scientific instrument. I think this has worked relatively well as the shape is clearly defined. The bottom serif has been made smaller to keep the attention on the top half of the Y, I did experiment with it being larger but it ended up looking like a cocktail glass. The thicker left hand arm draws your attention immediately to the letter and gives the illusion of something in the funnel.
I decided that when it came to the H I wanted to play around with a different type of instrument. The H was my impression of Instruments of torture. I wanted to keep the idea of a guillotine so simply moved the angle of the cross bar so that it would represent the blade and it was made the cross bar thicker so it would hold more emphasis.
These are my 10 current modifications, I plan on changing them and improving them when I get feedback from the critique on friday.
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