OUGD404 - STUDY TASK 2 - The Birth of a Font.

Task

Using the principles, processes and resources introduced in the first four studio sessions develop a series of practical investigations into the development of new letterforms and fonts. 

The Process - Use the individual anatomical elements of your chosen fonts (Gothic, Roman, Block, Script) to create a range of possible new letterforms.

1 - Cut the individual ellements out and re-construct them in order to create a series of Hybrid leterforms.

2 - Select the 5 most succesful/interesting/legible letterforms and produce the uppercase and lowercase Aa, Bb, and Cc

3 - Trace these off and hand render them.

4 - Using the same approach to hybriding create the appropriate upper case Xx, Yy and Zz for each of the 5 new fonts.

5 - Name each Font

Below are the collection of fonts/letters I came to the studio session with.

Block - Black Oak Std.

Script - Giddyup

Gothic - Khmer MN

Roman - Prestige elite std

To begin creating possible starting points for the 5 fonts we will produce, I first dissected the anatomy of 4 letters, A,a,B,b in 4 different fonts, gothic, roman, script and bold. With these letters cut out into their anatomic forms, bowls, stems, crossbars etc, I began to construct new letter forms by using the anatomy from different fonts to produce new letters for A,a,B,b. Below is my documentation of this process and all the hybrid letter forms which I produced.

Capital B set one.

Capital B set two.

From all these compound letter forms I formed I have to choose the 5 which I think are must successful and legible. The 5 I have chosen are shown below along with the complete set of corresponding letters which will make the set Aa, Bb, Cc, Xx, Yy, Zz. I have produced the corresponding letters by copying the anatomy of the chosen letter and applying it to the rest of the set in illustrator.

1. Halfblood

2. Twin

A couple of examples of how I am constructing the fonts. Assigning one font to the bowls, hair lines and crossbars and one to the stems. Below I have traced the stem of the lowercase a with my script font. I am then going to trace the bowl of the letter with my gothic font. Below is the lowercase z I have designed using the same strategy. The gothic font structures the stem, and the script font completes the letter.

3. Stately

4. Nacho font

This was by far the hardest of the five fonts to put together, and I would say my least successful in terms of aesthetics and readability, although the A pictured below looks quite elegant, when creating the rest of the typeface I found that the letters seemed very mismatched. I think this is due to the large different in elements between both my gothic and my block font. The block font was quite low and wide whereas the gothic was quite tall and slim. Below, using the uppercase C for example I have demonstrated the vast difference between the two fonts, I therefore had to change strategy for this font. Using the Gothic as a base, I started to apply and blend elements of the block font into the design. Using the lower case c as an example (third image down) I have demonstrated how i have applied elements of the block font to the gothic, and then created numerous shapes in between that when united in pathfinder, would make the elements blend into one letter, that had the appearance of both fonts.

5. Deuce