Task 3: Type Design & Communication Project 2A / Font Design

Dayyan ahmed (0344670)

Bachelors of design creative media / typography
Ending week - 7  Ending date - 29/5/20

Type Design & Communication

Project 2A / Font Design

PROJECT 2A FONT UNDERSTANDING AND CREATION

For project 2a mr, Vinod briefed us about how to dissect different alphabets from different font families , along with that he also showed us different characteristics of a letter font like , cap height ,ascender line . After the brief we were instructed to research about different type fonts and come up with one of our style of type font

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INSTRUCTIONS 

WEEK  7-8 PROGRESS 

I started off pretty lost , because of the dissections of the font they were hard to get my mind around so my first sketch was 

SKETCH 1 

fig 1 sketching ideas 

I tried using adobe calson pro to dissect and design the font but my lack of research well it showed in the sketch 

WEEK 8 FEEDBACK

Mr vinod said that the sketch was just not cutting it and that i was rather questionable so i should probably design more 
Along with that he also told me about my incomplete portfolio and i needed to update it ASAP and also change the theme because it was creating readability issues

WEEK 8-9

After mr vinod;'s week 8 feedback i quickly jumped back to the drawing bored because mr vinod and the class had already moved on to digitizing the sketches and transferring them to font lab for creation .

I did a little more research and came up with two more font designs 

DESIGN 1 

fig 1.2 sketching ideas with dissection 

In this i used bodoni as a reference because of it variation options with the curved serif and thick and thin lines , however i didn't quiet like it yet , i thought it didn't have a differentiate factor in it 

So i did a little more research and produced another one

DESIGN 2 

fig 1.3 sketches finalized 

I used the same bodoni refrence but  added more features of a bodoni font Curved serifs 

FEEDBACK 2

Because of how lagging behind the class i was, i couldn't get a very detailed feedback , so i just went with the last design on my own opinion because i thought it had more elements and stood out the most 

PROGRESS 1 

I did a few modifications in the digitized work compared to the sketches because i thought the curved edges protruding from it looked really out of place .

fig 1.4 process of creating type font 

PROGRESS 2 

Later i added a few more details .and smoothened , also some curved serifs , i also added a couple lowercase letters , and added ascender , cap , median , base and descender line

fig 1.5 process of type font editing

During this stage i also picked up few major characteristics of sans serif type fonts 

• Very thick with thin lines 

• stressed from above

• and small curves with straight lines 

PROGRESS 3

I did a little more reading and research , and made quite a few adjustments to my font , this looked the most satisfactory so i continued with this 

During the early stages of sketching and designing i observed my sketches were always a lot different from my digitized , so i came to a conclusion i just work better with digitized 

mediums 

Instead of just finalising the sketch font i started experimenting and testing digitized modifications of the font 

fig 1.6 line heights and illustrator transfer

I did move on to font lab with a couple letters of the earlier progress and realized my cap height kept coming pretty short in comparison to the thick and thin lines of my font design 

So i stretched the font a bit and enlarged it to something i found more satisfactory after which i re did my guides and heights 

fig 1.7 last process editing

Overall i came at this design that i found most satisfactory and suitable and decided to move on to the font lab process

I did go through a lot of trial and error process in illustrator and fontlab to get a suitable satisfactory design look

FINAL DESIGN FONT

fig 1.8 finalized font 

FONT LAB  AND POSTER

After designing our font we were given a tutorial and instruction on how to transfer our glyphs into fontlab and how to kern and set spacing between our letters

fig 1 font lab transfer

Like so i transfered my glyphs with simple copy paste into the designated letter space , also setting the cap height , ascender , descender and x height in the font settings
after transferring all the letters to font lab we had to open a metrics window to begin  the kerning process of all the letters

fig 1.1 kerning in font lab 

I started by setting all values to zero then replacing them with a constant value in this case 50 , moving on from there i started individual kerning , and also setting spaces
This was to omit any huge empty spaces between two letters or increasing spaces between letters which was more my case as my font design was very contrasting with thick and thin lines
After setting the kerning and spacing after a lot of trial and error process i finalized on the values and generated the font to install on my laptop

fig 1.3 export font type 

I named my font SKINNY FATTY it doesn't sound very professional but i think it was the most describing because how contrasting my font lines were either very thick or very thin

POSTER 

After taking a through look over the last overall progress and design to check if everything was on track i saved and installed the font on my laptop to create a poster 

We were given a line 'I AM A TYPE GOD, OBEY ME !' which we had to set up as a poster format

Progress 1 

For progress 1 i started by just free hand allignment of the words just to catch an idea of what i can work and then i proceeded to actually make a couple layouts that i could use for the poster 

fig 1 poster layout 1

This was my first layout i wanted to keep it simple but also emphasize in the main idea of the poster which in this case i thought was  very commanding like im a god u obey me so thats what i based my layout on. 

Along with that i wanted to align the line  'I AM A' and 'OBEY ME' while increasing the TYPE GOD size to really keep everything aligned and emphasised 

Second layout 

fig 1.1 poster layout 2

For the second layout i kept everything pretty much similar standard 3 by 5 , but i started playing which different text alignments like top bottom 

And i really thought this layout  could be something so its what i based my final layout on 

Third layout

fig 1.3 poster layout 3

I wasn't planning on doing this layout but it looks pretty nice compared to the other two even tho its super simple , i think with a little kerning and leading this should be fine 

fig 1.4 preview mode check 

I did keep switching between normal and preview modes just to check and yeah for some reason it just didn't seem aligned , first reason i thought of was gutter space 

I did do a couple other layouts 

fig 1.5 more layout exploration 

Just to check which alignments look better i think explorations and trial and error play a huge role in typography 

so after quite a bit of changes , experimentation , looking around and stuff i ended up making confirming this layout

fig 1.6 finalized layout

And right of the bat i confirmed it to be my final poster layout ,Because i really like how the alignment looked even with all the different stroke 

and mainly because how the I in the first sentence really kind of reflected the ! i really liked that look , but still emphasising on the type 

I did have to add a fair bit of kerning and leading just to get that satisfactory look and after this i exported it for submission 

FINAL OUTCOME 

Project A specific feedback
-Your portfolio is badly formatted, a pdf file is not made to public.
-Type design is good but the poster is not that good

Revised poster layouts for improvements

Layout 1

revised layouts 

Layout 2

revised layouts 

Finalized poster after revised layouts 

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FEEDBACK

Week 7:

specific feedback :

-update eportfolio 

-finish incomplete work

-update feedback

-finish project before deadline

Week 8:

General Feedback:
- Final JPEG must be exported (BW) 300dpi and uplaoded to your eportfolio
- You must embed your Final PDF layout (only final in PDF format)
- You must make your document visible to everyone in Google Drive
- Mention demonstration of briefing occurred during class, if no formal lecture
- Further reading must be accompanied with an image of the book or the site.

Week 9:

specific feedback 

-type font is good but poster is not 

-fix editing of e portfolio for submission 

Project A specific feedback

-Your portfolio is badly formatted, a pdf file is not made to public.

-Type design is good but the poster is not that good

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REFLECTIONS : 

For me this project was actually kind of fun , maybe because the amount of different choices we had to experiment and over all i did grow some interest in typography which was pretty unexpected , it also helped me realize how much effort and time goes into things like posters and type fonts which normal people usually overlook as very simple things .

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FURTHER READING