Typography: (Week 3) Type Design on Illustrator

3.2.16 (Week 3)

Fatin Nadia Binti Ishak (300 422 242)

Typography

Lecture:

The class began with Mr. Vinod looking at our second task and giving feedback based of it individually. Mr. Vinod taught us on how to use adobe illustrator, for instance, we need to open a new page for it, turn on the ruler, and turn on the grid (like a graph paper) and few other steps. Next, he taught us about how doing a word portfolio for each week during the semester.

Instruction:

Task 2 (15%): Type Design

You are to design a number of alphabets and punctuations, as determined by the teacher. You will begin by sketching and exploring a minimum of 3 options. 

The sketches of the alphabets are to be submitted on A4 graph paper for selection. As always, you will understand, analyse and reflect on the knowledge acquired during the allotted weeks for the task in your ePortfolio.

Starting with the letter “o” design a string of alphabets of similar characteristics. The subsequent letters must spell your name and therefore the characteristics of the letters must represent your personality.

Read or view the teaching material below to understand:

How to design your own typeface
So you want to create a font
The Ultimate Guide on How to Create a Font

There are many more resources out there you may read, please do if you have the time.

The videos below should be viewed at a later stage of the task, when students are more knowledgeable and ready to digitize their letters.

Marking criteria: You will be judged on your creativity; the aesthetics of your letter and how consistent are they with regard to their character or personality – do they look like a family of characters. You will be judged on whether you have made the appropriate research and analysis of other typefaces, whether you have demonstrated critical thinking and exploration. This evidence must be visible in your postings in the eportfolio and your in-class process work. 

Duration: 2 weeks
Deadline: week 3

Process : 

I simplify my font; it was a square shape, so i make it less wide and remove the crown shape decor on each alphabet.

(1) First attempt:

 

(2) Second and final result:

(3) My font using the Adobe Illustrator

Feedback:

According to Mr. Vinod critique throughout the previous process is that, instead of having so many of point, i can reduce the intensity of the character by maintaining one or two. After a few attempts it evolves into more simpler, which is fine, he says ' it is a nice font, i think nice looking font.

 Zameen says that the 'D' font looks like an 'O' font.

 Kylie says, i should the belly of the 'D' a little bit more.

However, Mr. Vinod says it will look a lot more better if i can add a bit curves at the end of both sides so it will look a little bit more like human font rather than too mechanical. He also adds that, the process is very important; it's like a DNA because we need to go back and reconstruct it again. Shahrul says the thickness of the straight line is not similar, but Mr. Vinod claims that, "Mr. Vinod eyes say that the size of the thickness of the line is the same"
 

Reflection:

Experience: 

I realized that Mr. Vinod wants us to create a font that is simple and have personality on it. It was not that easy, because my font was very decorative and it will be time consuming to write even one letter, so logically i think that the simple one is better and make sense.

Observation: 

Honestly, i did a lot of practice and each font does resemble each other, but then the final font is much more better, with just a little, but bump at the x-axis, it does look a lot simpler and unique compare to previous font that i have created.

Finding:

The Lecturer feedback really helps me; I can finally know what type of character that i need to actually put in my font and it is better for me to not overdo my font as before. So i may use the experience for the next task, I realized that in typography simple things is better than ever.

(4) Final submission, Type Creation: Task 2 (Type Design)

(5) ' Close-up'