Week 8 - Week 13 [14/11/2023 - 12/12/2023]
Kong Ga Wai 0359692
Bachelor in Design Creative Media
GCD60104 - Typography
LECTURES (FINISH)
INSTRUCTIONS
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Task 3: Type Design & Communication
We have to choose an existing font design we want and study it. The font I
chose was Serifa Std.
Sketches & Ideas
- The one thing I found interesting and had taken the idea to my final design
was this part where they have a horizontal line before the vertical straight
strokes and after. It has some kind of movement to it, well at least that's
how I see it.
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| (The movement I see) |
- With this idea in mind I started sketching, most of the sketch is me trying
to sketch them evenly and did some minor changes here and there.
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| Sketch 1 |
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| Sketch 2 |
- After many sketches, I started to notice there wasn't as much movement to
them as I wanted to. Then I found what I really wanted. The movement I had to
apply to the design was the movement of the strokes and how many strokes were
there.
(Usually, people only use one stroke to write an alphabet and you can tell it
because there is one consistent line. I want to try to design the letters to
make them look like there are at least 2 or more strokes. Another way to put
it is that its similar to teaching kids how to write, strokes by strokes.)
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| (Quick demonstration) |
- To get the movement I left some space between the strokes.
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| Without spacing |
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| With spacing |
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| Sample given by lecturer (blue) |
Digitalise
- When digitalising I decided to make it sharper at the edges by using the
shape tool.
- After finishing them I played around with Adobe Illustration and found how
to curve the corner of the shapes. So I tested it out with a letter and found
out it gives a smoother movement.
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| Comparison without curve and with curve |
- Listening to the feedback given I adjust their width and thus the final
design is done.
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| Final Design |
FontLab
- Now importing the designed font into FontLab. Followed the steps in the
video, key in our ascenders and descender.
Font Download Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13GcfuUExjVs7cBYfx_VFqPb-a6nSOAjU/view?usp=sharing
(Made a few extra letters)
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| Importing letter |
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| Font Design Final [Baller] |
FEEDBACK
Week 8: No feedback given
Week 9: For the sketch try to line out the top and bottom grid to be able to
have the sketch stay in place.
Week 10: Make an indicator of how wide each letter needs to be. For this, I
made a line to indicate how wide. Some letters are wider than the line
but still look around the same wideness, so for those I measure the
inner part of the strokes.
Week 11: Compared to the other letters some look wider; the inner stroke in 'N'
tends to be the thickest; looking at other fonts 'I' does not have the
same wideness as 'T', 'I' tends to be skinnier.
- The advice I got was to use the 'O' I already made to indicate
with my 'S' and 'C' (They look wider despite being the same size.
- For 'N' I made the inner stroke ticker and the outer strokes
thinner.
- For 'I' I made the top and bottom strokes shorter and the middle stroke
thinner.
REFLECTION
Throughout the whole process, I learned that designing a font is not easy
but it is also not as hard. First, we have to study the font that makes them
unique individually. After that, we have to grab the concept/idea to start
designing the fonts.
With many sketches and some trials with adjustments, I found ways to
improve. The way I came up with the idea for the final design was by messing
around with the program software. It wasn't a clear straight path toward the
final design, there were many twist and turn to get to the final design I
wanted.
Overall it was kind of fun. I learned a lot about ways to tackle a
design.
FURTHER READING
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"A Type Primer_2nd Ed_John Kane" |
Measuring Type
Typography has its own units of measurement. Originally, type size was
determined by the height of actual pieces of lead type. Nowadays we barely use
lead type but the concept of letterforms cast on small pieces of lead remains
the most useful way of thinking about type size. Size was originally referred
to the body of the type while today we measure it from the ascender to the
descender.
'Points' is the unit used to calculate the size of the type. A point is 1/72
of an inch or 35mm. 'Pica' is also used extensively in printing, it is made up
of 12 points.
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| Page 10 |
Set Width
Set width is the width of the form itself plus the space required on either
side to prevent one letter from bumping into another. Set widths are described
in units. Example: The upper case 'M' is 20 units wide and the lowercase is 9
units wide.
When type was cast by hand, every letter uppercase and lowercase had its own
unique set width. AS mechanized typesetting evolved, type designers were
forced to restrict the number of set widths in any typeface to accommodate the
limitations of the system that produced the type. Example: Letter 'a' and 'e'
might be assigned the same set width in some system because the technology
wasn't able to express finer distinction.
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| Page 11 |