Task 3A - Type Design and Communications Briefing and Demo

October 28, 2021

Task 3A - Type Design and Communications Briefing and Demo

08.10.2021 - 28.10.21 (Week 7 - Week 9 )

Chung Jia Xuan / 0346630 / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media
Typography
Task 3A / Type Design and Communications

LECTURES

Week 7: Task 3A - Type Design and Communications Briefing and Demo

In the beginning of the recorded lecture, Mr Vinod briefed us about our Task 3. We were told to analyse and deconstruct an existing font then create our own font consisting the characters - 'a', 'i', 'm', 'e; ', 'p', 'y', 't', 'g', 'd', 'o', 'b', '!', ',' , '.' .

I finished watching the recorded lecture of demonstating how to construct a typeface using shape tool in Adobe Illustrator.

Figure 1.1 Demo of deconstructing letter,
source: lecture

In the recorded lecture, Mr Vinod also mentioned that the round letters will be slightly bigger due to overshoot which is an optical illusion which states that round shapes often appear smaller than geometric shapes.

Figure 1.2 Overshoot
source: http://www.cleverandbright.com/blog/2014/4/7/lettering-improvement-tip-1

INSTRUCTIONS

Task 3 : Type Design and Communication

Research

Mr Vinod advised us to design our font type based on the 10 typefaces as they have the most basic and standard designs. After doing some research about type design online, I started my out sketches.

Figure 1.3 10 basic typefaces reference,
source: lecture

I chose Futura Std as my reference and started with my deconstructions. I chose to deconstruct the letter 'y', 'm' and 'a'.

Figure 1.4 Deconstructed 'y', Futura Std

Figure 1.5 Deconstructed 'm', Futura Std

Figure 1.6 Deconstructed 'a', Futura Std

Sketches

From the process of deconstructions, I've realised that sometimes when we see parallel straight lines in a letter, they are actually not parallel, for example the stroke in 'y'.

I've always liked square designs so I decided to sketch out some square-ish letters later.

Figure 1.7 Reference of square design letters,
source: https://fr.ffonts.net/SquareFont.font

Figure 1.8 Rough sketches of 'squared' letters

Figure 1.8 Digital sketches and tryouts of 'squared' letters

Then, we were told to digitalise the final font design. Firstly, we have to create a 1000x1000 points art board to start our task. Our design has to include the typography guidelines - the baseline, median, ascender, descender and cap line. I used shape tool to create and design my letter. I decided to use a thinner stem as a thick one would make my letter look bulky and I didn't want to achieve that result. I started with simply using long thin rectangle to form the letters 'e', 'o', 'a', 'm'. Then, I edited the curves of them.

Figure 2.0 First stage construction process of letter 'e', 'o', 'a', 'm'

Figure 2.1 Second stage construction process of letter 'e', 'o', 'a', 'm'

Figure 2.2 Edited the curves of letters

Figure 2.3 Trying out different outcomes

We were also told to jot down the measurements of the ascender, descender, capital height and median.

Figure 2.4 Guidelines and Measurements

Figure 2.5 Measurements from baseline

Measurements

Ascender line: 720pt

Capital height: 648pt

Median: 500pt

Descender line: -180pt

Figure 2.6 Grids and Anchor points of digitalised letters

Figure 2.7 All digitalised letters

After finish designing all the letters, I watched the recorded lecture of Mr Vinod demonstrating the way of developing our letters in FontLab 5 and 7.

Figure 2.8 Font exporting to FontLab 7

After exporting all the letters I designed from Illustrator to FontLab, we were told to adjust the kerning between letters. We were to fill in the font informations and measurements in the 'font info' tab.

Figure 2.9 First Attempt Kerning

Figure 3.0 Kerning

Figure 3.1, Sample words

Final Outcome in JPG - Task 3: Type Design and Communication

Figure 3.2 Final Task 3A: Type Design and Communication "Squaric"

Final Outcome in JPG - Task 3: Type Design and Communication Poster

Figure 3.3 Final Task 3A: "Squaric" Poster

Kindly download 'Squaric' typeface using this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AxtekzmmUKygFbn8_XSf3Ik08_S7nB0W/view?usp=sharing

Final Outcome in PDF - Task 3: Type Design and Communication

Final Outcome in PDF - Task 3: Type Design and Communication Poster

FEEDBACKS

Week 9

General Feedback

Specific Feedback

Mr Vinod said there isn't any major problem with my type design, I can proceed to export them to Fontlab.

REFLECTION

Experience

To be honest this task is a little challenging for me, but I did learned a lot of new things though. I have problems installing Fontlab 7 at first, and it took me a long time to finally installed it after searching through the problems. This task provides a chance for us to create our own type design and it was really a good experience. I've learned about what is a good design and how to develop my own design from the 10 basic typefaces. Continuing from what we learned from the previous tasks, we also did some kerning to the type we designed.

Observations

From the process of deconstruction to constructing my own type design, I've observed how a type is formed. Also, I'm surprised with the optical illusion where what we see is not exactly what it really is, the lines we thought are parallel are in fact not parallel.

Findings

Throughout the entire process of task 3A, I've realised that designing a font type isn't just about simply creating type on your own but the theories we learned before is very important too. We have to observe, think, brainstorm and be patient enough to create consistent letters and come out with a good design.

Search This Blog

Chung Jia Xuan (0346630)