Study Task 2

Today I started work on my second typeface for study task 2. This time I chose to develop a script font, as I feel that this is arguably the most different from the Roman font. By choosing these too probably more difficult fonts first I hope that when it comes to developing a Block or Gothic font I will have learnt enough from experience to do a really good job. That is not to say that I'm not pleased with the result of the Roman font or don't anticipate being pleased with the Script font.

The main thing I've took from having already developed a typeface is that I shouldnt be so strict and numeric with my rules on how bold each letter should be (numerically at least), and that I should sketch out a set of 12 letters at each stage before judging what, if any, changes need to be made, because by doing it this way I'll see the bigger picture and hopefully avoid being counter-productive.

My starting point was Lucinda Calligraphy

I started with the light, I drew a fairly basic line showing the
basic shape of each letterform, apart from the upper case Y,
which I created myself to so it didn't have a descender. 

I then thought that the lines weren't dainty enough to use as
as script font, so I traced over them using a thinner pen, whilst
keeping roughly the same shape, I was happy at this point. 

My first stage for the bold was to thicken the a traced copy of the
thin font without making the letters to illegible. I think generally
I succeeded with the exception of the upper case Y, which is
somewhat unsurprising as I drew the initial letterform for that myself
with no consideration for how it would look in other font styles. 

I then had another go at the bold, this time focusing on making
the terminals constantly pointed rather than having large flat
sections, which struck be as not being particularly dainty, even
in comparison to a bold letterform. I also focused on the upper
case Y to make it more legible. I was pleased with this set. 

For the regular I traced the outline of the bold around the
outline of the thin to give me some sort of guide as to what
sort of shape and thickness the letters should be. This was
my first attempt. Unfortunately there were inconsistencies with
the thicknesses and the counters. 

Another thought I had about the previous stage was that the
letters were generally too thick. To get around all these problems
I traced the basic shape of each letter using the same pen I used
for the first stage of developing the thin font. I then doubled
the thickness of the lines in most sections of all the letters, only
thinning it down when I was approaching the terminals, as this
meant I could keep the pointed terminals consistent throughout
the typeface. The points are something I will work on further when
I digitize the typeface.

Study Task 2

Today I "finished" my typeface for Study Task 2. Before today all I needed to finish was the italic font. I had previously started working on this by hand, but after re-visiting it I decided to do it digitally, as I've learned from previous sessions in Design Principles that not all typefaces use Italics, some use Obliques, which are a sheared version of the regular font, although this mainly applies to Gothic fonts.

One thing I did notice when looking at the font before I did the obliques however is that it did look very much like a Gothic font as opposed to a Roman one, due to the line weights, which were only inconsistent in the Bold font. I'd been referring to it as a Roman font on the basis that I was intending to add Serifs to it on completion, but it has since sunk in to my head that weather a typeface has serifs or not isn't what decides if it's Roman or Gothic. 

Clearly my typeface is a Gothic one, and I'm happy with it as I do feel the glyphs do work together. Because of this I have decided against adding serifs to it, hence why I questioned my earlier use of the the term finished. But because of this uncertainty I'm going to develop another typeface that I hope will be more successful than this one due to my understanding of fonts increasing as I've developed this typeface.

Fancy Wood

This type intrigues me because of how it would look from different angles rather than how it looks from the photographed angle. From other angles it may would probably look like a pile of bits of wood due to the gaps and layers within it, and this is a concept that could be used elsewhere. 

http://www.typographyserved.com/gallery/Fancy-Wood-is-a-Fancy-Mood/8981891

Diversiplay

One of our CoP lectures was about how type is the visual representation of language, this font sums this up perfectly. 

http://www.typographyserved.com/gallery/DIVERSIPLAY/8165751

Bauchstaben

I like this font because of how it shows that individual fonts can have their own personality and be inspired without being obvious.

http://www.typographyserved.com/gallery/BAUCHSTABEN-typeface-design/9802423

Growing Type

I found this on the internet and just think it's quite cool because of how different it is to any other sort of type I've seen.

http://www.typographyserved.com/gallery/growing-type-grass-2013/8985495

Handloom Picture Company

Handloom is an Advertising Agency who's branding I really like for it's use as type as image and the bright colours, which is something you don't often see in the branding of other creative companies due to current design trends.

http://www.typographyserved.com/gallery/handloom-picture-company/8574699

Study Task 2

I developed the regular font for my roman typeface today, as well as making a start on the italic. This wasn't too difficult to do because I found the midway point between the light and bold.

I then scanned this into a computer and sheared it at an angle of 7.5 degrees, printed that out, and used that as a base for the italic font. I found that I needed to shear it more, and as shown below, it didn't take me long to realise this and I soon stopped working on it. 

Design Principles - Hierarchy of Type

Today in design principles we learned about how the first thing you notice when looking at a page isn't necessarily the thing at the top of the page, but is more often than not dictated by something that stands out through differentiation from the other things on the page, generally via colour, image or shock tactics of some sort. We also learned that what you look at next isn't dictated by what the next most outstanding thing on the page is, but what your eye naturally looks at due to the layout of the design. This is known as the hierarchy of information. The thing you look at first is at the top of the hierarchy of information, then the next thing you look at is the second thing in the hierarchy of information. We then differentiated this from the hierarchy of type by doing an exercise where we cut out the first section of type our eyes were drawn too from a newspaper page, then stuck it down on a piece of paper. Then cut out the next piece of type we looked at and stuck it down and so on. The piece of paper we used showed us the hierarchy of type. The thing at the top of the page was top of our hierarchy etc etc.

Frame (Photoshop) - Final Crit

The final crit took the format of us leaving our work out with three questions written by us for half of the group to answer on a sheet of paper.

The questions I left were:

1. The numbers were intended to be disguised amongst the background, to what extent have I achieved this?
2. How long did it take you to realise that I'd used rulers? Does the distance you looked at the designs from make a distance to this?
3. The mock up is a lot lighter than the designs, how much difference does this make from the initial designs in terms of the contrast and transparency of the numbers.

Generally the feedback was that the idea was good and that I executed it well in the way I edited the photos transparency and contrast, and that generally people engaged with the designs as they took some time to look at them to figure out what they were made out of. All in all I was very happy with the feedback as I felt I had achieved what I wanted to achieve, which was:

1. To create designs that were nothing like any of the designs I saw in my research.
2. To create designs that would not only attract the eye of the customer, but hold their attention for a while as well.
3. To create designs that would work well in most frames, not just a specific style of frame. 

One useful piece of advice I was given was that I should consider putting some branding on them somewhere, as they look very generic at the moment, and would potentially be more professional.

Frame (Photoshop)

Today I used one of the photos of photo frames used in my research to show how my design would look as an actual photo frame backdrop. I did this using various effects in Photoshop.

I started by distorting my design so it was at the same angle
as the frame, I then added a layer mask to make sure my design
didn't cover over part of the frame.

I then added a paper texture to the design using the transparency
modes, as well as filling in the reflection of myself in the frame.
Both these layers were also masked.

I then lightened some areas to give the effect of reflected light
in some areas, this made my reflection stand out a bit more and
made it look more like a photograph. I also added a slight shadow
inside the design to make it look slightly set back.

How my finished mock-up looks.

Frame (Photoshop)

Today I made my design into the required sizes and in both landscape and portrait orientations in order to show how the design works as a concept as well as just a one off. The changing of the orientations didn't really take much doing because of the nature of my designs.

Study Task 2

Today I did some further work on developing a typeface for study task 2. Developing the light weight was fairly straight forward as shown in the previous post, but when I drew the bold using the guidelines I set myself previously I found that the letters looked very chunky due to having the same line weight. To change this I drew the set again but by using the decided bold line width only for lines or parts of lines that run vertically, with the horizontally running lines being considerably thinner, the variation of line width increased while the letter form still maintained it's boldness.  

Frame (Photoshop)

This morning I started working on the outcomes for the first brief of UGGD405.

Original Photo Of The Ruler

Edited Exposure To Lighten The Picture

Edited Curves To Darken The black Bits

Experimenting With Transparency To
Achieve The Overlapping Effect

Dublicating The Ruler At Different
Angles To Create A Background

Duplicated The Rulers Multiple Times To Create
Darkened Areas In The Shape Of Numbers

Made Grayscaled To Get Rid Of The Horrible
Yellowish Tint That Was Building Up Due To
The Layering.