Typography - Project 2

24/10/18 - 31/10/18 (Week 9 -10)
Azmina Fathima Haris (0337113)
Typography
Project 2 - Font Design


LECTURE NOTES

Lecture 9
Week 9 (24/10/18)

We didn't have a lecture this week, instead we were briefed about this project and the exercises we had to complete before class - type dissection and creating our own typeface.

Lecture 10 
Week 10 (31/10/18)

We didn't have a lecture this week either.

INSTRUCTIONS

EXERCISES (Week 9) 

Type Dissection

In this exercise, we were asked to pick any letter from our name and that "dissect" it in Illustrator to find out out what composes a letter in a typeface. We did this using only circles and lines, I picked the lowercase "A" to dissect.

Fig. 1.1 Final outcome after dissecting the letter

Project 2: Font Design

Our second project is to create a typeface of our own based on the nine fonts that were provided before for our initials (AFH). I chose to work on a serif font based on Adobe Caslon and Baskerville.
I started off with some rough sketches for the design, which on showing Mr. Vinod, he made a few minor changes to and then said I could proceed to digitise it.

Fig. 1.2 Initial sketch of my initials

I started to trace out the letters using the pen tool but Mr. Shamsul told me try doing it using shapes alone as it would look cleaner.

Fig. 1.3 Final outcome of initials in Illustrator

Fig. 1.4 Final outcome of "a"

Fig. 1.4 Final outcome of "f"

Fig. 1.4 Final outcome of "h"

Once done digitising it, we were told to generate it as an actual font on FontLab. The x-height of the letters had to 500 pts, which can be seen on the ruler on the left.

Fig. 1.5 Outline of initials on FontLab

Fig. 1.6 Generated font viewed in the metrics window on FontLab

FEEDBACK

Week 9

Specific feedback: Mr. Vinod said my font design was fine but modified it a little before telling me to proceed to digitise it - the the sharp head serif on "h" was made a little flatter and not so pointy. 

While I was digitising it on Illustrator, Mr. Shamsul said that the edges don't look smooth enough and I would be able to achieve that if I using circles and lines, just like in the previous exercise where we dissected the typeface.

REFLECTIONS

EXPERIENCES 

Week 9: At the beginning of class, I found myself feeling very sick and feverish and considered leaving early after staying for a bit, but I felt better once I started working on the typeface dissection; for some reason I really enjoyed learning more about the anatomy of a typeface and its subtleties. I also realised how much of a perfectionist I can be.

OBSERVATIONS

Week 9: Everyone seemed to be enjoying this class as it wasn't as fast-paced as the others - we were working on the other projects or on our blogs. 

FINDINGS 

Week 9: While working on the typeface dissection exercise, I realised that there are many seemingly meaningless components in the typeface anatomy, just like in our body; these components, however small or insignificant they might seem, can easily change the typeface - from its overall appearance to its readability.

FURTHER READING

Typeface: Classic Typography for Contemporary Design by Tamye Riggs 

Book cover (source: https://www.amazon.com/Typeface-Classic-Typography-Contemporary-Design/dp/1568988109)

The book covered the different kinds of typefaces - serif, sans serif, display and script. I read more about Univers, which a sans serif typeface designer by Adrian Frutiger, who also designed Futura. He wanted to create a typeface that would be more appropriate for longer texts. Univers was initially designed with 21 different variants and was drawn with optically even stroke weights and a large x-height for better readability. Univers turned out to be a huge success and inspired Frutiger to base future designs on its form - Serifa and Glypha.  

Typography Workbook - A real-world Guide to Using Type in Graphic Design by Timothy Samara

book cover

This book was rather interesting and I read the section "Expressing the Unspoken" which was on image and emotion in typography. I didn't really look into how image and type were integrated as I felt I could read more about it later when it would be relevant so I read more about type as image and using colours with type. When it comes to creating an image from, the book says that it creates immense opportunity and that its communicative power dramatically increases. These are a few examples that were included in the book.

 



Colour in Typographic expression

Typographic colour in a composition refers to the textural qualities, as well as the relative darkness or lightness of the type elements. A compositor in black and white could exhibit very dynamic typographic colour even though the type appears only in black. The same composition may be enchanted by colouring these elements or background to add dimension, expression and informational clarity.