Typography Task3A : Designing Typeface

Designing Typeface

28 May 2022  (Week 8 - 10)

Mabuchi ARATA / 0351579 
Typograohy / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Task 3A : Designing typeface

1, Lectures

From this week, I started the task to design new typeface by my own, but before I go, I watched the video given from Mr Vinod Nair to understand how I should tale a process to design any font by my own.

(Unfortunatelly I can't apply the video link to here but the video about the way to process designing typofaces)

After watching tutorial video,, I understand how I should do about designing typofaces.

・Study about the basic ideas about typofaces.

・Find any given fonts you think interest from internet.

・Use given fonts from facebook as references to sketch original fonts.

・Use Adobe softwares to design your font idea.

I started to design my own original typofaces by reading carefully books about typographics.

1, Readings

First of all, I used given PDf form books from Mr Vinod's facebook page to understand about fundamentail ideas about designing typography.

I used the books called "typo graphic e sign :", "A Type Primer" and "Typography Essentials : 100 Design Principles for Working with Type". Every books are helpful to understand the ideas about typography design.

From The PDF texts I read, I found basic Typography ideas such as shown as shown below.

・Pointed and curved letters have little weight at the top and/or bottom guidelines.

・Pointed and curved letters have bigger vertical size than distance between baseline and caplines.

・Horizontal stroke is actually thinner vertical stroke.

・In two storied capital and figures, the center of the letters are slightly higher than mathmatical center.

・Counter such as Ocapital of O or Q have much thicker stroke than other part of stroke.

After researching about fundamental ideas about Typography, I started to research unique text font to get references for my original works.

I already decided to design a seria font, which has a decoration on edge of the some characters, so I use these fonts shown below as references so much.

1, Bigilla

2, Maghfirea

3, Harmony

As you can see, I use those fonts as references to make my original typoface. When I look through these type of fonts, I realized some part of each characters, like diagonal stroke, straight vertical sroke or curved vertical stroke has much thinker stroke. I thought how I can use the contrast between thinner and thicker stroke for my font, this is the beginning idea of my original font.

2, Analogue sketch

After researching about typoface that make me interest, I started to design my original typoface. I designed 6 different typofaces inspired from 6 elements water, fire, wind, earth, grass and light and dark. Hereis my designed font representing both capital and lowercase letter form of the character "atgo"

These are all my typofaces I used for my analogue typoface sketch I post in the typography class. I use number 6, "Light/Dark" as my final outcome for analgue sketch. The main idea of "Light/ Dark" is difference (or contrast) between thicker and thinner stroke in each characters, when I look each fonts, I realised that each strokes of characters, they all have thicker and thinner stroke, each strokes are used  to provide much better impression for readers, so I decided to emphasis each thicker stroke to provide much strong impressions to thicker stroke.

In last week (24th May 2022), I show this typofaces and Mr Vinod liked my typofaces and I decided to design my typofaces in Adove illustrator.

3, Adobe sketch

In Adove illustrator, I started to make a references and lines such as baseline, Cap height Ascenders and so on. I used the font called "Janson text LTd".

The point is that I didn't just copy as typofaces, I want to state first that I use it just reference so I rearrange the style to create my own typofaces.

Let's start explain from the first character "a", The point you may notice that some part of the character seem missing. The reason for this is not because i forgot to add, but this is because I emphasis thicker part of stroke for each character without losing its meaning by distortion. Beside about that, I referred to the given font to create my original design, however, I still make my oun style in this design. This font is called "light and dark" which is because this font is inspired from natural elements, light and dark, so I tried to represent as it came from natural by reducing straight part as much as possible. 

The second character I design is "t", This is one of the part I struggled. Let me allow to talk from the top. Atctually, my design idea was totally different to the current idea was curved shape going clockwise as shown below. However it doesn't emphasis the thicker part and it may be against the typography design rule, therefore, I changed the idea to represent as referred font.

Secont point I want to mention about the arm of character "t", as I have mentioned, I emphasis the thcker part o stroke, counter, spine and other part and erase thinner part of the character to emphasis every thicker part of letters, so originally, I have designed the art of the "t" as shown above so it can emphasis most thick part of the arm, however, when I checked this design after design, I realised that it looks weird because of the shape of the right side of the arm, therefore I also think to remail only thickest part of the arm, but I thought it's going to distort the design of the character "t", so I decided to re design the shape of the character "t" as original design but remaining concept of the text. 

Finally, he point about the lower part of this character has bit struggle. After designing the shape of "t" ahown as above, I realised to duplicate the lower part of "a" and reuse in the lower part of the character "t", but when I tried in actual Adove software, the shape doesn't change as I expected, additionally, I had no idea how I should handle the upper shape of a, therefore I canceled this idea.

The third character "g" is the characer I focus most to represent my design idea. The reason I struggled in this character is because the shapee of "g" is different to the writing style we normally use as shown below.

As you can see the difference, I was forced design differently to the design idea we normally use. There are mainly two different ideas about designing the character "g" I struggled most. First is the position to place each parts of the character "g". As you may know already, my typography design is formed by many different shapes represent thicker lines, It makes easy to edit each characters and placement is also easier than editing normal shaped characters. The reason i struggled is because the small circle in the character "g" is smaller than the size of x height which is basically distance between baseleine and the top of he most lowercale letters, therefore, I sized smaller than x height, and another problem is the size and position itself of the circle, When I checked the position of the character "g", I realised that position of the character "g" is located much upper position.

After adjusting the size of the smaller circle, I found that the size of the character of "g" is smaller than other shape, therefore, I required to adjust the size of the character of "g" itself. The resize can't be just  expanding the size itself, this is because circle and bowl must be fit for each lines, therefore I required to adjust the size of each parts of the letter "g".

The last point I struggled is the shape of "g" itself. Actually, my previous design of "g" was looked like the design as shown below.

The upper circle of the character "g" has different angle to divide the character itself (it is called "axis") to the lower circle (it is called "bowl"). The image itself doesn't seem wierd but it looks wierd because the axis line divide he character into vertically should have same angle to make the design balance so it cause stable design. To make my design stable, I rearrrange the shape of character "g" by duplicate lower bowl of letter "g". The previous shape I used for upper circle of "g" was reused in the letter "o".

As I mentioned early, The shape of character "o" is used previous design, however, I didn't use directly, I rearrange the balance and angle of the shape to look my character stable. The previous design of the shape of "o" was unbalanced because left white shape was much thicker than right side, therefore I rearrange the size of both left and right shape to look both shape have equal thickness, as the result, the image is now stable so it's comfortable to read.

４, Final outcome

This is my final outcome for my task 3A(Sorry to send it wrong place and forget submit here in late.)

The order of lowercase letters are messed up because I created several characters told in Facebook, after that, I made other characters left in lowercase letters.

The main consept of this font is emphasis. I made thicker part of proginal characters in the font (most of the case, its vertical lines) thicker and thinner part more thinner and even I removed some part of characters where it's not important to determine specific characters.

I'm inspired the Modern font which has unique style to emphasis each character's spedific characteristics.

(My final work for Task 3A with using my own font set)

Here's my links to download my font.

LightAndDark Font Set

2, Reflection

As I have tried to represent my own original text design, I finally completed to design my original font as shown abouve. To state my progress from both side of good point and bad point, I think Designing text itself with folloring typography rules and main concept was prettey accomplished, on the other hand some part of the text such as arm of the letter "t" and counter of "o" could be improved to represent the main idea to emphasis thicker part of the text as muas possible without the text gets distorted and lose its meaning. The design of "t" is following to the refered font 

"Janson text LTd", I should simplify the text shape and understand most thicker part of the letter so I could emphasize thicker part of text more.

3, Reading

I have read the book called "Title: Typography Essentials : 100 Design Principles for Working with Type".

(Unfortunatelly, I could not paste PDF here because I could not download PDF document.)

This book is about the collection of typography design ideas. The ideas provide in the book is for letters, words, paragraphs and pages. Each typography ideas are explained with visual examples so it is easy to understand each typographic ideas,

Each explanation is no too long and easy to understand, unifortunatelly, I found this boook after designing my own typographical works, however, these example must help me to think ideas about upcoming typography design ideas.

These ideas really tells me that typography isn't just designing text but it's also about designing whole paragraphs and page surrounding it.

For conclude about the book, this book contains full of design ideas for words, texts, paragraphs and even page. I could use this for references for the next upcoming design task.