TYPOGRAPHY - TASK 3 (TYPE DESIGN & COMMUNICATION)
Week 08- Week 10
Jennifer Huang / 352990
Bachelor of
Design in Creative Media
Typography (Type Design &
Communication)
INSTRUCTIONS
Timeframe : Week 08 - Week
09
Deadline : Week 10
Description : You will be tasked to design a limited number of western
alphabets. To begin, choose an existing font design that adheres to the
direction that you would like to head in. Study the font carefully by
analyzing its anatomical parts. Start with rough sketches and upon
approval begin digitization of the drawings - software for
digitalization Adobe Illustrator and later FontLab. Artworks shall be
printed out for critique sessions followed by refinements. If time
permits we shall generate the font for actual use. You will endeavour to
create a typeface that has the hallmarks of a good typeface; subtlety,
character, presence, legibility and readability. Below are the letters
you will design: a e t k g r i y m p n ! # , . Upon completion of the
font, you will create a basic A4 size poster displaying your font
(further instructions in class).
Requirements : Laptop, Adobe Creative Suite, Font Lab, E portfolio
(Blog spot), Gmail Ac, Facebook Ac, and Zoom/Teams.
Submission :
a) E portfolio : (All gathered information (Failures, successes, epiphanies,
sketches, visual research, printouts, websites, images, charts, etc.)
must be documented logically and chronologically in the E portfolio for
the duration of the task in one post.
b) E portfolio : (All images/sketches/diagrams/scans must be
captured/photographed/scanned well, with good even natural light,
without shadows use of tube/bulb/flash light is not allowed. All
images/sketches/diagrams/scans must be labelled (fig 1, 2, etc.),
described and dated. Final submission must be indicated clearly
(distinguishable from process work) and uploaded as PDF and JPEG &/
GIF (not PNG) or as instructed in class.
c) (Only if instructed) Tasks to be documented in a printed A4 enclosed in a Clear Sheet,
logically and chronologically. The works must be labelled and dated –
use pencil and write neatly.
Learning Goals :
1. To develop student's ability to construct a readable and legible
font.
2. To develop student's ability to design a font with consistent
characteristics premised on research and analysis.
RESEARCH
During making fonts, there are plenty of things that we should consider
such as the Spacing, Kerning, consistency of the design and Legibility.
a. Spacing
The letterspacing of a font is often overlooked by type users as an
important aspects of its overall design and appearance, it also
misunderstood by many untrained or novice type makers, aka typeface
designers. The spacing of a font refers to the addiction of space to the
right and left of each glyph, technically knows as its side bearings. A
typeface that is well spaced is neither too tight nor too open as its
intended size-range and most importantly has optically even spacing between
as many glyphs pairs as possible before the addition of kerning.
b) Kerning
Kerning refers to the addition or reduction of the spacing between
two glyphs. These values are built into a font by the designer or foundry.
They are determined after a font has been properly spaced to adjust those
glyph pairs that are still too open or too tight. Even a typeface that is
spaced properly may have character combinations that need adjustments.
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Figure. 1 some notes from Mr. Vinod's YT tutorial.
SKETCHES
The following Figures are the sketches that I've made, First sketch was
done on paper manually on the first week of this task, The rest was done
on Procreate. Of all the sketches that I've made, I personally love the
third one.
Figure. 3 Idea Generation (30/10/22)
DIGITIZATION PROCESS
a. Designing typeface in Adobe Illustrator
During digitizing the
fonts, Mr. Vinod had already provided tutorials on YouTube, so all I need
to do was to follow the directions and design my own typeface based on the
sketch that I chose.
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Figure. 8 Sketch of the final typeface (30/10/22)
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Figure. 10 (6/11/22)
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FINAL OUTCOME
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First Poster PDF (6/11/22)
Font Information :
Ascender : 734pt
Descender : -230pt
FEEDBACK
Week 8 - Public holiday
Week 9 - Based on the sketches that I made (Fig.1) Mr. Vinod said that most of the letters such as k,t,g,p because the descender should be longer. Also I need to make more sketch exploration.
Week 10 - Letter A is weird in so many ways, it doesn't look good at all and doesn't really form the letter A in general. 'E' is acceptable but can be better if I make a few changes. 'T' and 'Y' should have the even amount of thickness. 'K' looks compressed, need to widen it a bit. 'M' and 'N' also should have the same amount of thickness in the strokes, Mr. Vinod said that I should start with re-designing the 'N' first than 'M' because the letter 'N' is rather harder.
Week 11 - The feedback Mr. Vinod gave this week was that the '#' should be revised since it doesn't really have the same thickness as the other letterform. The ',' needs to be longer bellow. All the other letters are excellent, with the exception of the letter 'Y' that's rather condensed in comparison to the 'G'. Other than that the rest is a nice looking consistent typeface.
REFLECTION
Experience - Task 3 was more enjoyable than the previous tasks
because I'm able to create my own font. Also the process itself is not
too complicated and rather interesting.
Observations - On the first week of this task, I'm quite consistent with my
time management and able to finish it based on the weekly goal that I've
set. But on the last week of the task, I did it couple hours before the
deadline (right now for example hehe) So I feel like although I'm doing
this task peacefully, I still need to work on my time management.
Findings
- I realize that I think I'm starting to get quite familiar with this
whole typography class, at first it was such a hard class and wasn't
enjoyable at all, but now that I know how the Adobe works, hard to
believe but I quite find myself enjoy it.
FURTHER READING
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