Alphabet Soup- Typeface

After considering all the research, I decided to move onto developing the typeface that would reflect Sarah's personality as I had perceived it.

Firstly I printed out all the notes I had written about the research and then I highlighted and wrote comments on components I thought I could portray in a type face.

I then made a list of the key elements I thought I would like to experiment with in my typeface.

I decided that these where the key ideas:

• Mixture of strokes (weight, length, spacing)
• Linear apearance
• Nature with an element of structure
• Curved and flowing
• A sense of openess

I looked into typefaces and I found a type to work from. This was called Hobo. I felt it looked like an art nouveau font which I had researched earlier.

I also decided that the type should be uppercase as I think Sarah has some bold personality traits and seems lively and quite loud.

I originally started with the letter I , I printed out all the letterforms at the same size , I then traced around the I and tried to draw a linear like pattern inside. I also followed a print out of the golden ratio. I then continually developed this I looking at research I had found. I had begun by trying to follow a spiral pattern, however I didn't think this was working and so I tried to experiment with lines, however I didn't really feel this was going anywhere either. I began to try a very minimalistic approach to represent openness, but I felt this was too simple for Sarah's criteria, and so i combined the minimal with the linear and came up with something I really liked, I was particularly inspired by a piece of art nouveau I had found when I had researched. 

The letterform I had designed was curvy and linear, a mixture of weights and space, I feel that it looked very natural and it also was a form of art nouveau.

And so this I formed the basis for other letters, I then followed I with L , I half filled in the terminal to represent a combination of structure as it was completely filled and openness as the whole terminal hadn't been filled. Again this formed another principle to follow in my typeface.

I then designed J which followed the above principle, after J was K however I outlined the leg as I felt without it, the letterform was indistinguishable. 

After these I went onto P then this formed R, in which I had used the same outlining method as K. From P I developed a B, I outlined this to make it recognisable as a B.

I then used I to form M, I drew the M and then traced over the detailing of the I. It isn't the exact same shape but the detailing worked in the M. M went onto N, H, T.

 

I then drew E and F, I decided detail was needed on the bar and I combined the two, and then  half filled the other elements.

 

C was different, I had to redesign the curve, I followed the same principles as I had for I. C then made a G and backwards it helped me form a D. C later on helped me to create the O, where I had to keep rotating the C to create the whole of the O. 

G also helped me to create Q and S in a similar way to C and O.

I then designed another completely new letterform as V, which then formed the stem,hairline and crotch of the Y and I created the tail as a filled shape. V also made an A and again I made the crossbar a solid shape. As well as this V made the U , although I had to add extra detail and V developed into a W too.

Ten I made Z, I tilted the I to create the diagonal stroke of the Z and then made the arm's from filled shapes.

This diagonal stroke helped me to create X too.

 

After I had completed all of the letterforms, I moved onto the punctuation glyphs . I considered each glyph and thought of how they connected to Sarah's personality. I have explained my choices in the piece below.

I followed the same principles for the glyphs as the letterforms. I created the dot of exclamation mark and the question mark. The hyphen Was formed by detail form the I as was the main diagonal component of the ampersand. The quotation marks where developed from scratch too . Each glyph except the hyphen has a filled shape and open space.

Development of final design
I scanned all the hand drawn letterforms into the computer and I then live traced them on illustrator, I then dragged them into photo shope converted them to black and white. I then used the magic wand tool to remove the white background. After that I used brightness and contrast tools to make sure the images where filled in and black. I had already set up a grid on the computer that had the same dimensions I had created on my A1 trace.
However I should of just set up a grid to fit A1 on the computer it would of saved a lot of time , as I had to cut out each letter and stick them in each square.

I then laid another piece of trace over the top of this, so that it would be completely clean and have no grid lines on it. I then traced over the letters with black fine liners of 0.2 and 0.8 thickness and the quality of the pens worked really well and created solid black lines.

Final Design

I feel that my typeface is very natural looking, it is intricate and linear. The strokes range in weights and space, and almost look like wood grain or zebra (zorse) stripes, it is flowing and curvy. I have also created a sense of structure with filled shapes, but openness by not filling in the original letterform completely, leaving it to merge into its background.