Design a typeface for a full alphabet and glyps that represent the personality/character of your partner. You will discover their personality/character thhrough a series of set questions.
Through the randomiser, we got paired up with another person from the class, and I got Charlie. We got a questionnaire to complete together:
What is your favourite colour?
Neon green/black
Which living designer do you admire most and why?
Noma bar - because it is simple
What is your most treasured possession?
An archive of gig tickets
What would your superpower be?
To be decisive
Who would play you in a film of your life?
Johnny Depp
Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Family, Devon Oliver
What makes you unhappy?
Anxieties
What would be your fancy dress costume of choice?
Doesn't like fancy dress
We got talking and I asked some more questions to find out about her personality and what kind of person she is. I think this is important as typefaces can convey different tone of voices. I wanted to have a variety of topics to work from, as I could base it on a certain band she likes, her characteristics and passions.
I got a collection of words to work from: warm, lovely, I See Stars, Blood On The Dancefloor, unicorns, reading, quiet, hello kitty, childish, music, family, anxiety, indecisive, piercing, no spare time, bold lines, lots of writing, and her favourite font is American Type Writer.
Now I have these, I'm going to do a mixture of sketches, ideas and visual research.
As her favourite font is American Type Writer, I started to look at how a typewriter style could be used, and I found as I started thinking of the characteristics it fitted really well with my partner's personality!
I then found some variations of type writer style fonts to base my font upon, which can be found on my design context blog. I looked at Courier, which uses a monospaced type where each letter is the same width. This was originally used for typewriters so that each line would be perfectly aligned. I decided to start sketching a monospaced type so that I could imitate the typewriter style.
Once I was happy with each letter, I imported this into Illustrator and started to trace it, using grids to make sure each letter is the same width.
I don't think this typeface worked at all, even though it was all monospaced, I think it looks unproportioned, and I definitely wouldn't use it. I think there are too many curves, and it should use more straight lines like Courier. After this, I decided to create another alphabet, basing it on Ernestine.
This is the new typeface I designed, and I am much happier with it. I think it is a lot cleaner, and I decided not to create a monospaced type, but still keep other chareteristics which make it look like a typewriter font. I think it is a lot cleaner and convincing.
The mandatory requirements for the brief are that it is traced onto A1 tracing paper, so now I have the type, I need to put it in the right format ready to trace. The measurements for A1 are 841x594mm, so I created an Illustrator this size and scaled my alphabet to an appropriate size as I designed it very small. I used guides to make sure the alphabet is aligned properly, and there is a space of 30.9661mm between each line. Now I have it to the correct scale and format, I can trace it directly onto the paper.
I am going to print it onto A1 cartridge paper, then trace it onto the A1 tracing paper in pencil, then fill the letterforms in black ink.
This is a picture of when I started to trace over the printed version on to the tracing paper. I found it quite fun to do, however the pen I was using didn't take onto the tracing paper very well so you could see the pen strokes. I tried sharpie, permanent marker, and several other pens, but they all had the same effect.
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