TYPOGRAPHY PROJECT 2

TYPORGRAPHY - PROJECT 2

22/5/2018 - 29/5/2018 week 9 - week 10

Ng Shu Zhi (0327158)

Typography - Project 2 - Font Design

LECTURES
Week 9: We had a talk in the morning with Mr Vinod about his ideals and reasons behind his teaching style and told us to become picky and make sure our strokes in our fonts were to be same width.

week 10: [Wesak holiday]

INSTRUCTIONS

We were told to make our own fonts which could compliment the Taylor's mark. We were to study the design of the mark with its minimalistic design and design a font which would suit an education institution.

WORK

fig 1.1 My studies on the Taylor's mark and I tested a few of the fonts which were given by Mr. Vinod to compare and see which fonts seemed the best with it.

I had concluded that the Taylor's mark was:

- Symmetrical

- Consistent width on every stroke

- Tappered ends at the bottom but is san serif

- Top have serifs

- Thick strokes with condensed details (put into lettering)

figure 1.2 My progress of my work and the different fonts I came up with for the Taylor's mark.

fig 1.3 For the first designs I had, I tried to study the Univers type because I liked the condensed and modern feel to it so I tried to have the font have serifs on the top then tapered ends at the bottom to mimic the Taylor's mark.

fig 1.4 Then I tried to mimic the spacing between the mark's strokes but this gave too much of a rebellious and futuristic look to the font. I was then told to go for a more conservative option and design for the font.

fig 1.5 I tried to go for a more conservative route to designing the font and I realised that the Serifa type looked very symmetrical to still mimic the mark and had this traditional and timeless feel to it which I thought was suitable for an educational institute.

fig 1.6 The product for the font for the Taylor's mark. (before condensing)

fig 1.7 My progress in fontlab studio

In the picture I have included some information about sizing and cap height, x height and descender height for viewer's reference.

fig 1.8 Me repeating the process for the other letters with the same steps of copying the outline from illustrator and pasting it into fontlab to have the exact strokes.

fig 1.9 continuation of the process until the last letter which was the letter S

fig 1.10 After doing all of the fonts, the white fonts signify the fonts I have made fonts of. 

fig 1.11 Then I could test my fonts in the metrics window, it does only show white selected letters which you've put into font lab because I tried to put in any other letter and it didn't work.

fig 1.12 the final design for the TAYLOR's font, this time I tried condensing the letters a bit to fit the width of the Taylor's mark to have them compliment each other.

fig 1.13 My new progress working on the font in fontlab

FEEDBACK
Week 9: We had to train ourselves to be very critical with our work to be able to check for the similarities between each word in our text.

Week 10: [Wesak holiday]

REFLECTION
Experience
Week 9: A very time consuming experience but this trains the eye to be able to see small details like the consistency of the width of the fonts throughout the entire text which proved to be very difficult.

Week 10: It was fun to be able to write about my love and hate for things and 150 words are a lot and yet very few words to write. It was also a bit difficult to understand fontlab studio as when I first started the program and clicked on New File, immediately a keyboard of letters appeared and I was very overwhelmed diving into fontlab blindly but after looking at a video explaining fontlab a bit, it's somewhat manageable now.

Observations
Week 9: The width of my font isn't consistent through out the text, especially the curvy letters like S and O. It was hard to be able to make everything consistent. Even some of the straight fonts like T and A, didn't have consistent stroke widths.

Week 10: Fontlab is apparently much easier to use than I thought because it is just copy and pasting from Adobe Illustrator and saving a font.

Findings

Week 9: I have to learn how to train my eyes to be able to see even the smallest of details in typography, especially if I'm choosing a san serif font with the intention of having the font letters be symmetrical. I think the best way to be able to get a consistent stroke width is by using the pen or line tool to create a stroke and change the line width later one to have consistent lettering.

Week 10: Fontlab was very intimidating at the beginning, especially having to dive into it blindly with no experience or knowledge about it whatsoever. I had to do my own research on using fontlab and found out it's actually much easier to use than I thought so sometimes external research can help me with things in my projects. 

FURTHER READING

WEEK 9

fig 6.1 Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works

- We now read texts as a pattern for us to understand, it is like looking at a silhouette of a person to know the general idea of what it is.

- Then later only we look at the small details in the font which adds character.

- Refinement to the font is what makes it special, from the width to the difference in x-height or ascender and descender. 

- Refinement = accessories which give a font character.

WEEK 10

Second Edition: The complete Typographer: a manual for designing with type

 Paper printing: - The effectiveness of percentage screening is also affected by the paper quality. This determines the of the dot screen.
 Reverse type :
-The "reversed out of a background colour, it'll affect the legibility
- It does though create an impact and visual variety on the page
- The typefaces aren't made for reverse types whereby some of the sharp details will break and turn the font blunt.