TYPOGRAPHY / Task 3 (A) : Type Design & Communication

October 07, 2021

TYPOGRAPHY / Task 3 (A) : Type Design & Communication

15.10.2021 - 28.10.2021 (Week 8 - Week 10)
Esther Vanessa/0350751/Bachelors of Design (Hon.) in Creative Media
Typography
Task 3 (A) / Type Design & Communication

JUMP LINK

LECTURE

Lecture 1-4 completed in Task 1

Lecture 5-6 completed in Task 2

DEMO NOTES FOR TASK 3A

When creating our own fonts, we need to do research first; looking it up on the internet like in Pinterest
Next we would want to sketch it out and find the most similar fonts that are already available - it would be nice to relate these sketches to the 10 fonts that are already given my Sir Vinod.

Figure 1.1 Analyzing the anatomy of letterform

X-Height - should be 500pt

rounded forms looks smaller, so overshooting the x-height is permissible

Figure 1.2 Overshooting in the letter 'd'

Refer back to the basics of letterform anatomy for a reminder of the naming.
Try recreating the font we sketch in Ai, digitalize it.

INSTRUCTION

TASK

We are asked to create our own typeface in this third task. Before starting, we should try and deconstruct several letters from our preferred typeface. These typefaces could be from the 10 typefaces given in the beginning of the semester. The letters we're supposed design are the following,

a i m e p y t g d o b ! , .

I am very much interested in monospaced fonts. So I started looking up on places like typewolf.com which is a website recommended by another designer friend. According to them, monospaced fonts are usually used for coding and programming, but it's also commonly used for a more minimal and effortless look.

So for deconstructing, I tried to look from the 10 typefaces, which coincidentally serifa is also a monospace font. I started by deconstructing the letter a.

Figure 2.1 deconstructing the letter a from serifa (19/10/2021)

I find this a really interesting, some parts of it is more elliptical than the rest and it has taken a sharp turn to a pointy inside. other than that, they have really flat surfaces even though it is still elliptical, this includes the really flat tail/foot.

Afterwards I try to explore more monospaced fonts. From the typewolf.com website, I found a really interesting monospaced font called Apercu Mono.

Figure 2.2 Apercu Mono showcase (19/10/2021)

What attracted me to the font in the first place is the lowercase L. It is so different with the rest of other monospaced lowercase letter L. I made a comparison of Apercu mono and Courier New.

Figure 2.3 comparison of the same letter (19/10/2021)

It is very noticeable that they are very different, Apercu Mono has a more fluid with minimal rigidity while Courier New is very thin and frail in comparison to the previous. The latter is obviously very minimal and firm.

I continued to explore more on the letterform "a" to see more and get takeaways from research. I displayed a row of all monospaced fonts with the same letter to compare.

Figure 2.4 Different fonts with the same letter (19/10/2021)

(A little off topic.... but looking at different fonts with the same letter and comparing them is actually more fun than I thought... they're so different from each other)

Figure 2.5 Apercu Mono font deconstruction (19/10/2021)

I realize that monospaced fonts tends to overshoot a lot. I also realize that monospaced fonts differ in thin and thick strokes. The thing about monospaced fonts is that have fixed space (hence the name); they have fixed width. This moment I also realized that the reason monospaced fonts have tails is to elongate and maintain approximately same width in between the letters.

A little more research, I found out that monospace also includes this 'subsection' of fonts in which they look like pixel art. I figured these are mostly used in terminals.. or some coding language.. I honestly have not too much clue about. What I understand is that they look really really cool, although probably not preferable for leisure reading for general public.

Figure 2.6 VT323 Font on Google Font (19/10/2021)

Sketch

Lifting my apple pencil in the beginning is pretty intimidating to say the least. Nevertheless, all I have to do is try; mistakes are bound to happen anyway so might as well I just try. Packed with all these research I've done and plus with more quick scrolls around Pinterest too, my stylus reached the screen and I started designing away.

As I said, in the beginning, it is pretty intimidating. My mind is full of so many ideas yet I am not sure if I can execute it. Here I'm showing my first couple of sketches

Figure 2.7 First FIRST sketch (19/10/2021)

What they said.. humble beginnings. Although I can explain a bit on how it ended up like this. These are clearly rough sketches. I have to explain that I also love serifs, (Hence why I used Georgia on my e-portfolio) and that is why I tried creating serifs in the beginning, without understanding much about the typeface itself.

I quickly ran out of space so I created more and more sketches on another canvas, also with trials, little details I had to remove or add.

Figure 2.8 Second Sketch (19/10/2021)

I tried to be more organize in my second try, recycling some of the ideas made in the first one and try to refine them more too. Before Digitalization, I tried fixing some of the second sketch too.

Figure 2.9 Fixed Second Sketch (20/10/2021)

Afterwards I went ahead and try to digitalize the fourth (pixelated) font.

First of all, I set the x-height as 500pt by using the rectangle tool and I created guides for it.

Figure 2.10 Trying out on Illustrator (21/10/2021)

Figure 2.11 Creating the letter a (21/10/2021)

Figure 2.12 Creating the letter a (21/10/2021)

Initially, creating the letter a is pretty straight forward, I used the shapes tool and the pathfinder tool to do most of the work.

Figure 2.13 Progress (21/10/2021)

Figure 2.14 Progress (21/10/2021)

Figure 2.15 Progress letter E (21/10/2021)

Figure 2.16 Progress (21/10/2021)

I made final adjustments, especially to the e and i so it'll look more proportional. I then exported the first draft for the digitalization.

Figure 2.17 First Draft Digitalization (21/10/2021)

AFTER FEEDBACK

After feedback, my main goal to fix the font is consistency. So I tried fixing it and came up with this.

Figure 2.18 Final Digitalization in Illustrator (22/10/2021)

I adjusted the followings:

the letter m to be wider
stroke consistency in the letter e
the letter t to be more narrow
the exclamation mark height to be the same height as the cap height

Then I imported the font to FontLab, but firstly I had to unite all the shapes in Illustrator using the Pathfinder tool.

Figure 2.19 United all the shapes in Illustrator (27/10/2021)

I imported to my FontLab studio 7 and continue to fix the side bearings to 50 on left and right on each letter.

Figure 2.20 Fixed side bearings (28/10/2021)

I then proceed to kern the letters since there is an unevenness because of certain curvature/strokes.

Figure 2.21 Kerned font (28/10/2021)

I also decided to name my font as "Pixel" and exported the font to be downloaded and use to create the poster. I want to keep the poster as minimalist as possible.

I used the words "i am, a type god. obey me!" because it showcases all of my letters and symbols. I do this in illustrator, and with that I'm done.

FINAL SUBMISSION

Figure 2.22 Final strip from illustrator JPG (28/10/2021)

Figure 2.23 Final strip after kerned JPG (28/10/2021)

Figure 2.24 Final Poster JPG (28/10/2021)

Figure 2.25 PDF version of all of the above (28/10/2021)

Download the typeface here

FEEDBACK

WEEK 9

General Feedback:

Pay attention to consistency and don't go overboard with the graphical elements

Specific Feedback:

Can try removing the serifs
'e' looks awkward probably because the difference in the strokes

can try using the grids in Illustrator to maintain the consistency of stroke thickness

'm' can stretch out more
't' could be shorter in width

REFLECTION

Experience

FUN! That's what I have to say. I had lots and lots of fun creating my own font. The research part was more fun than I thought and I learnt to be more aware of the fonts I'm surrounded with. This has to be my favorite task from typography so far. The feeling of actually typing out the font is also exhilarating. I for sure will try to create another font for fun some other time.

Observation

I observed that all fonts are different. Even if they look the same as a whole, if you look more closely into it, they're are all different and unique. The strokes and the thick and thin of each font is different, and they may portray different feelings/emotion when you look into it.

Findings

I found out that monospace doesn't always look like the classic 'monospace'font we all know. They just means that they have equal spacing between each of the letter, or at least look like they have similar width.

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Esther Vanessa [0350751]