Advanced Typography / Task 3: Design Exploration and Application

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27.5.2022 - 1.7.2022 (Week 9 - Week 14)
Britney Chow Pei Jun / 0350043 / BDCM
Advanced Typography
Task 3: Design Exploration and Application

JUMPLINKS

LECTURES

INSTRUCTIONS

Task 3: Design Exploration and Application

In this task, we're required to create our own typeface, either explore, enhance or to solve a problem. In this task, I spend a lot of time thinking which would be better for me and what I'm interested in doing, I then decided to do something different from what I have done in my 1st semester, something funky? I then went to the internet to do some research and found out that a lot of the Anime titles does not really have an official typeface and I'm inspired to create one. 

fig 1.1; Anime: Durarara!!; sauce: (Wikipedia)

I like this anime quite a lot, so I was mainly inspired by this anime's English letterform which looks like fig 1.2. I then look up a lot of Anime style type of letterforms and then I decided to do something similar to this as well. 

fig 1.2; Durarara!! Letterform; sauce: (Dafont)

Next, I proceed to do it out straightaway in Illustrator as I feel sketching it out is always different from doing it in Illustrator. Although it does not mean that it is easy, every time I do something in Illustrator, my artboard is definitely very very messy and dirty as seen in fig 1.3, sometimes, even I get confuse a lot of times my self. Doing this from scratch is definitely tiring. 

fig 1.3; Messy Artboard; (20/6/22);

fig 1.4; First draft; (9/6/22)

In my first draft, not gonna lie, this looks like shit. I'm not happy with most of the letters I created and I also didn't reach the progression I wanted so I wasn't feeling really happy with the whole thing. In fig 1.4, the letter "O, D, P" looks really bad and well, ugly. I'm surprise how someone can come up with something like this, sigh. However, I decided to recreate it, and then continue on. 

fig 1.5; First outcome of typeface; (15/6/22);

After that I changed a lot of how the characters look like. I think some of them look okay, but some still needs to be amended. First of all, the letter P looks quite ugly, next the letter "R" also look like it's gonna be falling asleep soon, not to mention both M and W looks like the "You shall not pass!" from Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. The letter "U" also looks a bit too wide, so I tried to change them. 

fig 1.6; Letter P before and after; (17/6/22)

fig 1.7; Letter R before and after; (17/6/22)

fig 1.8; Letter M before and after; (17/6/22)

fig 1.9; Letter W before and after; (17/6/22)

fig 2.0; Letter U before and after; (17/6/22)

Although it may not be the best, but I think it looks better by a bit. I have also made some amendments for other letters, though only slightly. After that, I proceed to make the numbers out, along with other punctuations. 

fig 2.1; Numbers; (20/6/22)

The design for the numbers, I have referenced it from the default font of Illustrator, which is Myriad Pro and also Serifa Std, this can be seen as from the numbers like 6 and 9. Anyway, after this, I went ahead and generate the font in Font Forge. Wow, not gonna lie, that's gonna be one of the software that I hate in this semester. The whole thing looks confusing, and there's a lot of functions that I think should be there isn't. However, a good thing about this is that I have to adjust some stuff quite manually, which is more precise I suppose. (Because of my skills). 

fig 2.2; Importing letters; (20/6/22);

First of all, I imported the files I have exported from Illustrator. For that part to work, I first need to open Assess Export from the windows tab, then insert all the letters into it, choose to export as SVG file. Then I proceed to rename all the files to their suitable names and at the same time, check if there's any error with my letterforms. In fig 2.2, I have also the capital letters in to lowercase letters, that's because I don't have time to do lowercase letters, maybe I will try it out during my semester break...

fig 2.3; Transform - Scale; (20/6/22);

So I adjusted a lot on my letterforms, I spent quite a lot of time here due to how frustrated I am with the software, also I have anger issues, I think... hahaha. Anyway, I first scale my letters using scale uniformly and adjust it accordingly with the percentage thingy right beside it. Usually the percentage that I used for my letters are ranged between 70% to 110%.

fig 2.4; Transform - Move; (20/6/22);

After I apply and press OK, because I couldn't do 2 at the same time, I then move the letterforms. For this part, I have to adjust a lot of times a long with the scaling part, as I have to place the letters correctly and stuff. 

fig 2.5; Kerning Time; (21/6/22);

After I finish adjusting all the letters and stuff, I proceed to start the kerning part. This is hard. Seriously. But I supposed it's more like you need to be very careful and patient in this part. You have to match all the characters and stuff so yeah. I also spent some time doing this part. 

After that, I generate the font out and proceed to work on the application part. This part, is also very hard. Like really hard, to me at least, hahaha. Since this part is where you actually use your font on, so I find it quite difficult to correctly use it on the applications I chose. After some feedback from my lecturer, I decided to do Manga covers, Anime Bookmarks and poster. 

fig 2.6; Manga Cover attempt 1; (23/6/22)

fig 2.7; Manga Cover attempt 2; (23/6/22)

Initially I thought this 2 looks pretty decent, and I need to do some adjustments for it to make it look nicer. Buuuut, I have completely missed the point of doing this. This part of the task is to apply your typeface, so I think I need to focus more on that. And I should definitely be doing it quickly. So, I changed it. 

fig 2.8; Manga Cover Attempt 3; (30/6/22);

fig 2.9; Manga Cover Attempt 4; (30/6/22)

Although it doesn't look perfect, but I think it looked better than the previous ones that I did. In these 2 attempts, I have tried a lot of colors to see which one of them looks suitable and doesn't looks weird, at the same time, sticking to the color theme of the Anime. I also added the manga title and it's author to it. 

Next, I moved on to my next application, which is Anime poster, this is a bit difficult for me because I not too sure if I did it correctly or not. 

fig 3.0; Poster Attempt 1; (30/6/22)

fig 3.1; Poster Attempt 2; (30/6/22)

I have tried adjusting the colors, the opacity and trying out different background colors and also font colors and it's outline both in Photoshop and Illustrator in these 2 attempts. For the 2nd attempt, I think if I changed it a bit, it looks like an album cover instead. 

After that, I go ahead and do the bookmarks. Although the pictures that I found online isn't really high in the resolution, I altered it. Image credits can be found in the images credit part. 

fig 3.2; Bookmarks attempt 1-3; (30/6/22)

I tried to go for a minimal graphic type of bookmark compare to my 2nd application. In the process of creating these bookmarks, I thought of using different type of colors for both the background and also the font, however, I think that having the graphics half blend in to the background looks quite okay too. I also then decided to just fill the font color with same one as the background, then altered its' outline to match up with the blending in style. Although I may not spend as much time in creating the bookmarks compare to the other 2 application, I would like to believe that I did my best. 

Final Task 3: Design Exploration and Application


fig 3.3; Final Type Design - Ragdoll typeface; (30/6/22)

fig 3.4; Application 1 - Manga Cover 1; (30/6/22)

fig 3.5; Application 1 - Manga Cover 2; (30/6/22)

fig 3.6; Application 2 - Anime Poster 1; (30/6/22)

fig 3.7; Application 2 - Anime Poster 2; (30/6/22)

fig 3.8; Application 3 - Anime Bookmarks; (30/6/22)

fig 3.9; Final Design Exploration and Application in PDF; (30/6/22);

FEEDBACKS

WEEK 10

General Feedbacks: We should consider what category of type design we're going for. Furthermore, we should also consider how our font is gonna be applied. 

Specific Feedbacks: The first idea is more interesting compare to the others, perhaps can try to make it like a sound effect typeface of some sort. 

WEEK 11

General Feedbacks: There should be consistency in your typeface, although not too much to the point it looks boring. The typeface that you create should start from scratch. 

Specific Feedbacks: The typeface looks rudimentary, some of your letters look like you're a beginner at typeface design, but you have already done this once in semester 1. 

WEEK 12

General Feedback: Whether your typeface looks good depends on the application.

Specific Feedback: While you can consider doing the sound effects as an application, you can also do manga covers. You can do a few issues or something similar, and add some logos and or words to it. 

WEEK 13

General Feedback: The point is to bring out your typeface, you should not do something that will cover away your typeface. 

Specific Feedback: It looks really bad, it doesn't bring out your typeface at all. 

REFLECTIONS

Experience: Personally, I think that this is a hard task as well. While I may the experience of typeface design before, it doesn't mean that I'm really good at it, or an expert whatsoever. Self-abasement is something that I have in my mind constantly and that caused me to be very stress. Of course, there are other problems that caused me to be stressed as well, and I think that it is mainly my own problem that I couldn't manage myself well. Anyway, in this task, I feel both excited and overwhelmed at the same time. While I'm happy I get to create my own typeface and also able to apply it on something, I can't help but feel that what I do is wrong. 

Observations: I observe that sometimes I really couldn't focus 100% on something, and would constantly get distracted, even by a really small thing. This is something that I ought to change as I think that it's starting to affect my daily life as well as when I was conversing with other humans or doing chores, I start to also get forgetful lately, it may due to this. Furthermore, I observe that typeface design is not a simple thing and it requires a lot of patience, and that one can not rush thing when doing work like these as the outcome would not be good. 

Findings: I realized that sometimes, I get sad very easily, and sometimes, when I do, I couldn't take the criticism from both my friends and lecturers, even though they are very insightful and helpful. As a result, I would postpone my work for a long time, occupy myself with other work instead, until after a long time when I picked it up again, I realized that I should have done it earlier. This is due to how my executing skills are poor, and I need more time to do it compare to others. I wish I could improve myself. 

FURTHER READINGS

fig 5.1; A Type Primer by John Kane 

Basic: Describing Letterforms

  • Typography employs a number of technical terms
fig 5.2; A Type Primer page 13

fig 5.3; A Type Primer page 14

fig 5.4; A Type Primer page 15

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