Typography - Project 2A
13.10.20 - 20.10.20 (Week 7 - Week 9)
Sajiya Mir (0340836)
Typography
Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Project 2A
Lecture
Tuesday, 6 October 2020
In today's class, Mr. Vinod checked project one and gave us our final feedback. Then he started briefing on project 2A. In Indesign, he explained what is the cap line, baseline, and x-height. He then demonstrated how we could digitize our letters. Then Mr. Shamsul demonstrated how to create letterform with strokes. After that, we got some time to make five sketches and both Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul looked at it and helped us pick the best one.
 |
| Fig.1 text anatomy - Capital letter such as the capital letter T stops at the cap line, while lowercase h goes up to the ascender line. The capital letters tend to be smaller than the lowercase h because capital letters look larger in nature. So to make sure there is an optical alignment the capital letters are reduced in size. - The letters g and j would end on the descender line. - x-height tends to be large as when we are reading our eyes focus on the x-height. - When designing the x-height must be 500 x 500 - Whenever you have a curved stroke, it needs to overshoot the cap line and the baseline a little because, when compared to a letter t it will look smaller due to having a smaller surface area on the top. Tuesday, 13 October 2020 This week we got final feedback for our eleven words and then were briefed on how to use the font lab to create an A4 poster using the words created. Tuesday, 20 October 2020 We got our final feedbacks on our words and the poster. |
Instructions
For Project 2A, we had to come up with our typeface. Before that, we were asked to look at the existing type of family and dissect three letters. I choose Jason Text and examined the letters o, h, d, and a. I decided to do an extra one for a better understanding of letter construction.
Fig.1 Jason text
 |
| Fig.1.2 dissection of letter o |
 |
| Fig.1.3 dissection of the letter h |
 |
| Fig.1.4 dissection of the letter d |
 |
| Fig.1.5 dissection of the letter a |
 |
| Fig.1.2 Sketches |
After feedback, Mr. Vinod suggested I carry on with sketch number five, so I did a rough drawing of all the eleven letters and the punctuations. In the rough sketch, I didn't focus too much on how perfect the circle here I just tried drawing where I wanted the strokes and the overall shape of the letters.
 |
| Fig.1.3 Sketch 2 In the second sketch, I focused more on how I wanted to draw the circles, the circle won't be this perfect when digitizing it, I would have to add the weight on one side but for now, I tried drawing with the eclipse tool so to just get an idea of how big I wanted the bowl to be. |
 |
| Fig.1.4 Sketch 3 In this sketch, while keeping the eclipse circle I tried to decide on the tail. I kept the same design in all the letters. The stem has a loop such as the t, b, and d I also added this loop in the exclamation mark. The comma I tried to make it similar to the tail. |
 | |
| Fig.1.5 sketch 4 |
Fig.1.6 sketch of the letter y
In this sketch I focused more on the contrast, I looked at the weight on the letters of Jasons Text and tried to follow to draw my letters. While the a,g,p,d, and o still have eclipse I made the sides thicker and the top and bottom thinner. Same with the d,b, and t the loop has a thicker stroke on the left than the right. I was having a bit of difficulty with the 'y' as I was not sure which one looked better, so I kept it simple.
 |
| Fig.1.7 Grid Before constructing we set up the grid we had to follow with the x-height at 500, Capline 700, Ascender line 750 and the descended line at -250. Then I constructed the letter 'o' first and used the 'o' to help me construct the rest of the letters such as a,p,g,d and b. |
Fig.1.7 Typeface draft 1
After the feedback I confused on making the strokes consistent through out the letters and removed the loop from 't' and 'i'. I also removed the round bottoms from the letters 'm' and 'p'.
Fig.1.8 Typeface reworked
Before moving the letters to Fontlab we had to combine the type face into one. Then using the Minus font in path finder we had to make the bowl of the letters hollow.
Fig.1.9 Typeface combined
Then we copy pasted each letter into the correct cell using FontLab 7.
 |
| Fig.2.0 Fontlab transfer Once all the letter were transferred we had to write out the letters and adjust the kerning between each letter. |
 |
| Fig.2.1 FontLab 7 |
 |
| Fig.2.2 Typeface Poster 1 |
 |
| Fig.2.3 Typeface Poster 2 After feedback I fixed the 'i' and 't', also worked on the 'y' to make it thinner and make the top squared to match the 'm' and the 'p'. |
 |
| Fig.2.4 Final Typeface |
Taking Mr. Vinod's suggestion I made the Type face bigger, changed the text containing my name and the font name to Helvetica. I also moved the text a bit higher and centered my name.
Fig.2.5 Reworked Poster
I was not very satisfied with my final poster outcome so I tried to redesign it into a different composition. I tried it with different variation such as black and felt the new composition fit my typeface better.
 Fig.2.6 Final poster variation Black |
 |
| Fig.2.7 Final Poster JPG Fig.2.8 Final Typeface and Poster PDF |
Feedback
[week 7]: Specific Feedback: Sketch #5 looks good, just try to fix a and o a bit more.
[week 8]: General Feedback: There must be consistency in the strokes. The comma and the period usually are bigger than the strokes. Specific Feedback: The m should be slanted a little. Try to reduce the 'a' to be consistent with the 'o'. The edges can be made straight as there is a lot of roundness in the typeface. The loop for the letters t, i, and ! can be removed. Little more work needed on the 'e'.
[week 9]: General Feedback: use Helvetica at point size 8 for the name. When designing a poster try to think about the alignment and contrast to make the composition more dynamic. Specific Feedback: The 'y' could be thinner and the top could be made square. The 't' and 'i' can be made thinner to match the 'm' or 'd'. The exclamation mark can be bigger. For the poster push it more to the top and increase the size.
Reflection
[week 7]:
Experience: This exercise was quite difficult for me. There are so many minuscule details in a typeface that trying to fix it and make it look presentable took forever.
Observations: One observation I made while studying Jason text was how adding contrast by making some stokes thicker and some thinner mand the whole font looks different. Not even the fulls stop in the font were perfect circles.
Findings: I learned a lot about the details in a single typeface; it takes so much time to just make one stroke look good.
[week 8]:
Experience: Making the font in the font lab was relatively easy because ninety percent of the construction was already done; we just had to place it into the right cells. I would have liked to play around with the font size to give the word God more emphasis, but I was still happy with the poster outcome. It was my first time making a font, and I was excited to name it and be able to use it like any other fonts. It felt a bit surreal to type in my own type family into the font box and to be able to use it.
Observations: The observation I made was the height of the ascender and descender line. I always thought the designers decided on the length because they all looked unique, but this was due to the thickness of the strokes and the bowl and counter's size that made each family different.
Findings: Something new I learned was that kerning is needed even when making up a typeface. I thought kerning is only used when working with a body text with existing fonts, but I never thought kerning needed to be considered even while designing the typeface.
Further Reading
 |
| Typography Basics https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/comd1167e148blog/?p=421 |
- Cap line is a line that shows the height of the upper case letters in the font.
- Ascender is the stroke of the letter that goes between the middle line and the cap line.
- Descender is the stroke of the letter that goes below the baseline.
- In typography, contrasts are brought about in size, weight, and width. The contrast in typeface can help catch the viewer's eye. Contrast can also be brought about by pairing different typefaces. For example, Helvetica and Arial don't have much difference in their letterform so the contrast is low. Finding the right pairing comes with a designer's experience and knowledge of all the different typeface. No matter what pairing you choose the readability must always be considered.
- A focal point is used to create dynamic compositions. This helps designers take control of what the viewer reads first. Mostly used for posters and advertisements.
- Typographic hierarchy refers to the level of importance expressed by a text. Hierarchy can be shown by the letterform size, letterform weight, letterform design characteristics ane even the color.
Comments
Post a Comment