Typefaces and Fonts - Design Principles

Today we had a discussion about the work we were set from last week (here), and how the differences between the standard, light and bold can define how well a typeface works. By this, a font could be really effective and efficient as a regular font, but it may not work in light or bold. We also had a discussion about what constitutes a font being italic and the generally accepted standards that come with it.

To build on this discussion and the work from last week, we further developed our work to make the bold, light and italics more recognisable so as to increase to functionality of the typeface as a whole.

My Development Of The Bold Characters

Alphabet Soup - Illustrator

I Started Re-shaping The Bowls On The Letters To Make The Bowls Perfectly
Circular, As This Would Allow Me To Use The Golden Ratio To Make The
Bowl:Counter Ratio Apply To The Fibonacci Sequence.

How I Layed Out My Font On An A2 Illustrator File

The Mask DVD Case

This is the DVD case from the mask, a Jim Carrey comedy film. The quirkiness of the main text and the choice of bright contrasting colours reflects the character of both the actor and the character he plays. The inflated-looking text reflects the fun aspect of the film.  

Alphabet Soup - Typeface - Final Crit

Today was the final crit for the third studio brief. I went into the crit quite confident about my work as I knew that I had reasons for everything I'd done in the project, and could easily justify them. I was slightly concerned that it didn't aesthetically represent Sophie though.

The feedback was unanimously positive, and when Simon asked people what sort of personality traits they thought of when they saw my font, two of the responses were "positive" and "progressive", which pretty much sum up the attributes of Sophie I wanted to represent.

My Final Font Drawn On Tracing Paper And Printed On Paper

Alphabet Soup - Illustrator

Initially I Was Going To Develop The Letters By Changing Their Dimensions
So Their Height:Length Ratio Was The Golden Ratio Of 1.6:1, But Stretching The
Letters Messed With The Line Weights Of The Letters Too Much. So I Decided
To Take A Different Approach.

Lined Up The Alphabet So The The X-Height Was 8cm

Added Guides For Ascenders And Descenders 5cm Further
Up And Down As This Is A Multiple Of The 1:1.6 Golden Ratio

I Then Altered The Heights Of The Ascenders And Descenders
So They Lined Up With The Guides

I Chose To Use Lower Case Letters Because They Allowed
Me To Edit Descenders

I Then Noticed That The Points On The V And W Went Above
And Below The X-Height And Baseline, So I Edited This To
Make Them Fit In More With The Other Letters.

Another Thing I Noticed Was The The Dots On The I and J
Were Floating Around In A Place With Seemingly No Reasoning
To Their Positioning, So I Moved Them To Be In Line With
The Ascenders Of Other Letters