Studio Brief 2 - Alphabet Soup - Typeface

Brief

Design a typeface for a full alphabet and glyphs (a to z, !, ?, @, £, :, .) that represents the personality/character of your partner. You will discover their personality/character through a series of set questions. Using your newfound appreciation of the anatomy of typographic forms and the wealth of research that you have already gathered, focus on the manipulation of existing letterforms in order to solve this problem.

Background / Considerations

Experiment with a range of possible line qualities, marks, colour and paper types. How will colour help the communication? What papers can you work with? Do you need to draw, photocopy, photograph, collage, trace or combine processes? Your final resolutions should read as convincing, well crafted and clearly presented typographic forms.

We started by having a chat with our partners in order to get information about them and some starting points to look into for our typefaces. For this, we were given a questionnaire that we had to go through and get some insight into our partners.

Questions borrowed (then adapted) from The Guardian Magazine Q&A - Caitlin:

• What is your favourite colour - Blue
• What is your earliest memory - 4th Birthday
• Which living designer do you most admire and why - Zim&Zou due to the craft
• What is your most treasured possession - Engagement ring
• What would your super power be - The ability to fly
• Which piece of graphic design do you wish you had created - 'Typographic Sandwiches'
• Who would play you in the film of your life - Angelina Jolie
• Who would you like to invite to your dream dinner party - David Beckham
• What makes you unhappy - Being cold
• What would be your fancy dress costume of choice - 'Riding on an ostrich'
• Which words or phrases do you most overuse - Swearing

However, although I found out some fairly interesting things out about Caitlin, I still didn't feel I had a significant starting point for my research and idea generation. We then had a conversation about various aspects of our lives, both design based and personal.

Design based:

• Calligraphy or Uppercase but sans serif
• Infographics
• Clean, precise designs with block colours
• Quite minimal
• Studio Photography
• Mixed Media
• Perfectionist: Spends a lot of time on her work (likes detail)

 Personal:

•  Active: Stays healthy and goes to the gym (slight obsession)
• Football: Is more like 'one of the lads'
• Scissor Sisters
• Countryside: Slight recluse but approachable
• Opinionated but considerate to others views
• Family oriented
• Travel
• Doesn't smoke or have tattoos
• Can hold a grudge

Some of these points were a lot more useful for me in terms of a starting point for this project, especially some of the design based elements of our chat. These will be things I shall be bearing in mind throughout the initial ideas stage and the whole design process.

Initial Sketches:

Here, I have taken an image from Caitlin's blog and created my own letter form from a pattern used within an image she likes. Although this could be an interesting route with a possibility to create an endless amount of variations, I don't think it successfully represent her as an individual.

Whilst looking through Caitlin's blog I noticed pictures of her scuba diving, a very interesting and rather rare hobby that she forgot to mention. I think that due to the unique nature of scuba diving as a hobby that this is going to be the main theme running through out my designs.

These designs were based around the sort of natural, hand-written type often found on gas cylinders. I don't really know where I could take these in terms of a whole typeface and they don't represent scuba diving or Caitlin enough for me.

This 'G' was based around a pressure gauge. Although I think that aesthetically this looks very effective, it could easily be misread as some sort of speedometer etc. and would be very difficult to incorporate this concept within many other letters of the alphabet.

Here, I have taken the idea of under water hand signals and recreated them into the shapes of different letters. Once again, I really like the concept and think it would make an interesting typeface but could easily be misinterpreted.

I have explored the use of many simple shapes, a basic silhouette of a fish, to create a letter form. I think this works effectively in representing scuba diving as well as being a legible letter form.

Similar to the hand signal idea, I have taken another aspect of scuba diving and transformed it into a letter form; using the actual swimmer to make the letter form was quite tricky and I feel as though I would have great difficulty in designing some letters of the alphabet as well as most glyphs.

 This letter form was created by adapting water bubbles into the shape of the letter. However, it is too illegible and I think due to the nature of bubbles my designs would become too complicated and chaotic.

I then decided to look at the way in which a letter form could look like a wave, or as though a wave is effecting the letter form in some way. To do so I drew out a simple wave like structure and fit my letter into it. These are effective in terms of portraying the effect water would have upon a letter form. I also think that as a concept, it could progress into becoming a very unique typeface.

 I have continued to develop my 'wave' idea, experimenting with the way in which water could effect type. For these, I have taken a horizontal section across the middle of the letter form and almost dragged it across to a side whilst leaving the top and bottom in place. The bottom right 'R' looks much more successful due to the natural and flowing feel it has from the smooth lines that appear to be flowing away from their original positions.

I continued to look at the way in which I can represent waters effect, again the most effective being the version with a smoother distortion of the letter form. This time though I have looked at changing the letter form vertically as opposed to horizontally which I feel doesn't work as successfully.

 

I have looked at the various points at which I can manipulate the letter forms to before the become too distorted and lose their believability. I also looked at distorting the image in two directions, going upwards and downwards within the same letter form but it makes the letter look too modified and unrealistic. I really like the horizontally distorted 'A' on this design sheet and will extend this into the whole typeface.

This is how I shall be arranging my letters within my typeface, ensuring each letter has enough space and that the letter forms are equally spread and aligned across my page.

This is a sketch of my final outcome so that I can ensure I have all of the letters aligned accordingly.

I added structure lines throughout my sketch so that each letter form was altered equally, giving my typeface some unity and cohesion. 

Final Typeface:

 

 

This is the name badge I created using a digital version of my typeface. It flows nicely and is legible and readable.

We then had to use our letter forms to create a word of a brand or product. I chose Champneys Spa's as it fits well with my under water theme.