Typography - Task 3

16/5/23 - 30/5/23 (Week 8- Week 10)
Jessica Tjoe / 0361482
Typography/ BDCM/ Institute of Innovation and Technology
Task 3: Type design and Communication

LECTURES

Week 8

First things first. Research is important. Using the 10 fonts provided by the lecturer, find the font most similar to your chosen type face and deconstruct it. (03:58)

Figure 3.0: screen shot of Typo task 3A (5/29/23)

"Taking a look at the Nuances and details of how the letter form is deconstructed. "

With a 1000pt X 1000pt artboard you can start deconstruction. create 3 art boards and use that for deconstruction, add a fourth on the bottom and expand it's length so you can start designing your new typeface. X-height must be 500pt x 500pt, the main reason why is because the rounded form always looks smaller, they also tend to over shoot the areas of the letter forms. Rounded forms have more surface area compared to flat forms so keep that in mind.

Note: Areas - top is called an Ascender because it goes up

- bottom is called a Descender because it goes down

- and the in between is called the X-height, (because of algebra. why not?)

Lines - Base line - where the letters stand

- Mean line - where the lower cases reach the top

- Cap line - Where capital letters reach the limit

- Descent line - where the descenders hang out

- Ascent line - Where the Ascenders reach the limit

figure 3.1; screen shot of Typo task 3A (5/29/23)

Determinating the x-height is somewhere between base line and ascent line Never exceed the art board.

using the anchor point tool will help you in this. You don't have to duplicate directly, what's the point if you do?

Week 9

adding textures to the letter

use brush

use outline

object > path >outline stroke

pathfinder>Select both> minus front

faster way to do it;

create a brush. just create a brush

alter how you want.

Font labs

First. Measure you're letters

X-height = 500pt

Ascender line = 723pt

capital = 173pt

Descender = -264pt

baseline = 0pt

(results are personally taken from my own measurements.)

Figure 3.5: taken from lecture Typo task 3A Illustrator to font labs (6/5/23)

Once you've done your measuring go to font labs and open up a new font file, and click file > font info where you can then fill out your information (like giving your font a name). When you're done make sure that all your letters have been converted to objects and united so the font won't fall apart. And don't forget the XY grid because when you paste on Font-labs the software tends to jump.

Select > Object > Path > Outline stroke > Pathfinder > Unite/Shapebuilder tool > Pathfinder > Exclude

Week 10

In order to create your font. Open up font labs (in my case font labs 7) and name your font.

Make sure that all your vector artworks are Merged.

Figure 4.0: taken from Typo_task 3A fontlabs 7 demo (6/26/23)

make sure your ruler is turned on and drag the X and Y coordinates to the intended glyph after that select the glyph and Ctrl + C then open up font labs and search for the slot of the intended glyph and paste.

Figure 4.1: taken from Typo_task 3A fontlabs 7 demo (6/26/23)

When the pop up menu appears, it will ask you Vector or Bit map? And also if you want your copy to be in the exact place. Answer Yes. All those settings are located in the preferences.

Next go to Windows > New Metric Tab

Figure 4.2: taken from Typo_task 3A fontlabs 7 demo (6/26/23)

There is an icon at the top where you can access the show text bar. Another icon you can access is the metrics bar where you can kern the letters. numbers with negative numbers tend to reduce the space. while positive numbers tend to increase space.

Figure 4.3: taken from Typo_task 3A fontlabs 7 demo (6/26/23)

Once you are done kerning, you can now export the font. Go to files > export, then have the settings on Open Type TT and click export. Your font shall now be in a file with its name so you can go ahead

Instructions

Task 3

You are going to attempt to create a typeface along with the traits of a good typeface those being; artful character, presence, legibility and readability. The letters you will design are [a e t k g r i y m p n ! # , .] And when you're done with the font, you will create a simple A4 size poster displaying your work.

Research

When doing research for your own typeface, It is always important to have a goal in mind. what kind of type face do you want and how are you going to make it. But in my case, I didn't have the slightest clue as to what typeface I wanted. So I tried my hand at a bit of studying. What makes a good typeface ?

It needs to be subtle in character and presence, legible, and readable. I tried looking at decorative typefaces and the like but I just tend to find the most readable ones are ones without all the cool detail.

Sketches

These are the sketches that were experimented on for this task. We were asked to do A E T K G R I Y M P N 5 different ways. 4 with different sorts of pens and inks we would usually write with and the last one would be done with an unconventional tool (I used a lighter).

figure 3.2;week 8 excersizes 1 and 2 (29/5/23)

I presented them to Mr. Vinod the following week and he said to choose one for digitization. What I essentially chose was the set of letters I did using the artline 3.0 due to it's clean finish and straight forward edges. However from careful consideration and advice from my lecturer, I landed on the Kurecolour brush tip because of its playful lines and the contrast from what my peers are doing.

Digitization

Digitization took a good chunk of time. I had to download font-labs 7 in order to do this. Least to say it wasn't very hard to get a hang of but it did have a good chunk of its problems. For example; when pasting R and P there were simply no holes appearing when I sent them to font labs leaving me to have to make them myself. And for a while I thought the software was broken due to the lack of fonts appearing whenever I tried to copy-paste something. I found out that this was due to the fonts jumping around despite the fact I've already used the XY grid.

Figure 3.5; digitization process in illustrator

Figure 3.6; digitization outlines

As you can see here I have already merged the letters in advance so it would be easier to import it onto font labs.

By this stage I had already finished the first digitization. It had messy strokes and conistancy was no where to be found.

Figure 3.3; Week 9 digitization attempt 1 (6/5/23)

Figure 3.5: Digitization in Font-labs 7 (6/13/23)

In the end I went for a more streamline look after careful consideration of mr.Vinod's critique. He showed me various techniques of using the pen-tool to create these shapes and how to use custom brushes to my advantages.

Figure 3.6: evolution of Klekoro Regular fonts (6/19/23)

I then changed and modified the letters until they looked a lot more consistent with each other. I also followed up with the punctuation marks for the fonts.

Figure 3.6: Punctuation marks (6/19/23)

I then called my font Klekoro Regular.

Final

Figure 4.4: Klekoro Regular font_Final.jpeg

Poster

I tried many words, but it was so hard to come up with something impactful. You have the letters AETKGRIYMPN. You can make words like Take, Gate, Rake, Yip, Yup, Tap, Map, Rap, Gap, Pin, Gin, etc. But there isn't much meaning you can get out of it.

The phrases I made up were;

[MAKE A GEAR] and [TAKE A MAP]

Figure3.7: Take a map and Make a gear (6/20/23)

Essesntially these were scrapped. due to not presenting every letter so I came up with a new phrase.

[GREAT GRIM REAPER KATIE GRINN].

Figure 3.8: poster_Great Grim Reaper Katie Grinn (6/20/23)

These are the 3 posters that I have made so far. Out of the three I decided to go ahead with, no.2 where I used the negative spaces to create a zig-zag like pattern. along with spacing the sub-text in those said negative spaces.

Final

figure3.9 :Poster_ Final.jpeg (6/26/23)

PDF

Poster

Font

Download the font here :

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14DUfD_Yc19Pn4ae8GKc-MFPBVH6DuSDL/view?usp=drive_link

Feedback

Week 8

General... Independent Study Week

Specific... The issue with this is they all look the same. In any case, 3 is fine, however why aren't your letters sitting on the same baseline? i.e. g, y, p they don't seem to be anatomically positioned correctly.

Week 9

General... Identify the letters that work well together as some letters are designed better than others. Minor bits in the letter can help create character and identify a letterform that doesn’t have too much character. Make sure that there isn’t too much character in the letterforms. During the digitization process, there are some losses of the design due to technical errors. We don’t need to both uppercase and lowercase, we only need to do both. If you’re doing capital letters for your digitization, you shouldn’t use the entire art board for the whole letter, make sure that there is space within the 1000x1000 space. As long as the changes during the digitization process are more positive than negative, and the character isn’t lost, then it is an enhancement and is okay.

Specific...Be careful about the thickness of the letterforms as some of them are thicker than others.

Week 10

General... Letter fonts are more then just one stroke. it should be known about what choices go behind the design of the font. During the session mr. Vinod had explained about font labs and the precautions that come with using it such as the letters jumping from its intentional spot. As well as the fonts needing to have consistency. Fixing what you did will only levae you with more work then before so you might as well restart.

Specific... Use the brush to custom make your own lines to give it character. Reuse lines and shapes to make the whole set.

Week 11

General... Make sure that your fonts are consistent.

Specific.... P, R and N for some reason tend to be a bit more inconsistent then the others, is it because of height? width? or spacing in general?

Week 12

General... Make sure to add a hyphen when you break the words.

Specific... Everything needs to be the same size. Add some noise to make it stand out

Experience

Overall having to make a font of your own handwriting isn't the easiest task. Probably one of the hardest and easiest tasks I've come across this semester.

Findings

Turns out the letters when imported into font labs like to jump around often in my case. When I pasted the type into the software, I find that the slates always end up blank. Turns out the best way to have the letters appear is to double click the slot then zoom out to find the letters and move them to the correct slot position. This happens often right after my 2nd try at importing the letters and I don't know why. I did everything that the video lecture said to do. No idea why it happened, and I got really stressed over it.

Observation

I'm not sure how designers do it but font making is a tedious process. I definitely wouldn't want to work in this field especially on a tight deadline. it's possible but I don't think I'll be able to finish this in like 5 hours compared to drawing a fully rendered illustration.

Further Reading

In order to assist me in the designing of this font I looked up Typographic design: form and communication to learn more about how letter forms are made.

Typographic design: form and communication

by Rob Carter, Phillip B. Meggs, Ben Day, Sandra Maxa, and Mark Sanders

I specifically read the chapter letterforms analyzed in order to learn how to make my letterforms more consistant. Learning how the parts come together proved to be very useful when designing Klekoro.

the parts of Letterforms (page 32)

Especially the Proportions, I've had a hard time with the proportions and my font was very inconsistent. The contrast in stroke weight was clashing with the proportions. So I learned to use proportions to better my anatomy.

Proportions of letterforms (page 34)

I also used this to my advantage to make my font achieve a visual harmony, it's very important to remember that everything has to be on the same line or the balance of the whole thing is going to be in jeopardy.

Optical relationships with a font (page 36)

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Jessica Tjoe (0361482)

Typography - Task 3

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