Final Product and Rationale:

Typeface Design Rationale

This project requires to design a font of our own and at the same time, make it somehow represent ourselves. This seemed like a difficult task at first but after managing all the knowledge of typography I have learnt this session, it became very straightforward.

The actual design took a significant time longer than making it on graphic design software like Illustrator. Brainstorming ideas was the key part to the success of my font design. I constructed a list of my hobbies and tried converting them into different symbols which I could use or include in my font. Soccer, Tennis, Travel, Art, Music and Martial Arts were all the candidates I listed in my brainstorm. After some initial prototyping the concept of the martial arts was selected as it relates most to symbols. Weapons are an important aspect in traditional Chinese Martial Arts and from large amount of research and investigation, I spotted that the shapes of certain weapons resemble letters. I made my letters using the shapes of the Chinese broadsword, crescent moon scythe and the blade of butterfly swords.

Using the shapes of these weapons, I created my very own font called Razor. My aim was to make my font look sharp and razor like, since they are all made from the shape of weapons, while at the same time represents myself. 

My font is best suited to be used for big titles or decorative signs since the shape of the letters are fancy. It is supposed to look sharp.  It can also be used for some ad or logo design, the shapes of each letter is what makes my font so unique.

Just some pictures of weapons that inspired me for the assignment:


This is a Chinese broad sword. The shape of the blade can be seen in most of the letters in my font.

 

Here is a picture of a monks spade. The crescent moon tip inspired me deeply with its "C" shape. Ignore the big flat tip at the top.

Its the Butterfly Sword!! The blade resembles the shape of the letter "D" which i used alot in my font as well

Exercise 6: Concepts and Brainstorms for Assignment:


 Brainstorms for design:

 Concept 1: My first serif font concept

Concept 2: My second concept based on musical notes and symbols, hence the fancy shaped letters.

Concept 3: My last concept based on the weapon shapes from martial arts. This is the concept i ended up using for my final design but i modified the shapes of the weapons. This was my original idea for the final design.

Exercise 5: Famous Typographers Research


Eric Gill:

Eric Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stone-cutter and print-maker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. He was born on 22 February 1882 and died on 17 November 1940. Being a type designer, he made major contributions to the world of typography with the creation of his most well known font Gill Sans. He created other fonts such as Perpetua and Joanna which are also used frequently by graphic designers. Gill Sans is a sans serif font hence the name. It has quite a large x-height which makes it standout in both small point size and large.

Some examples of the typefaces created by Eric Gill:

Geoffrey Lee:

Born Wimbledon, England 07 November 1929, Geoffrey Lee designed the display font called Impact. Impact has been used most for large titles because of the large x-height and the narrow spacing. The most eye catching characteristic of Impact is probably the thick strokes in each letter. The face bears comparison with the font Haettenschweiler but is less narrow.

An example of the font Impact:

Howard Kettler:


Howard Kettler, born in 1919 and died in 1999 designed Courier in 1955 for IBM. People recognizes it as the face originally designed for use on typewriters. A typical characteristic of older typewriters is that all characters are given the same amount of space regardless of their width. This principle defined the look of Courier font. Courier is a serif font a fairly large x-height and small ascender and descender. As said before, the spacing of this font is the one unique characteristic that can be used to identify this font from others.


Examples of the Courier font:

Exercise 4: Font Analysis

For this task, i chose to analyze Arial and Times New Roman.

First is Arial:

Arial is probably one of the most used fonts by graphic designers for its simplicity and effectiveness. Being a sans serif font, it is one of the most suitable fonts for informal information like blocks of text or paragraphs in an essay. The typeface was designed in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders for Monotype Typography and was first known as Sonoran Sans Serif.

Times New Roman is the most common font used by people of all ages throughout the world. It is the default font for many software programs. Being the most used font must imply that it has some unique features which other fonts do not have. Times New Roman is a serif font and is designed for more formal writing such as for newspapers, dialogues or scripts. The positive aspects of this font is that it can be well read in all point sizes, giving the reader a smooth feel when reading it. The serifs within the font allows it to flow brilliantly. It was created by Cameron S. Latham in 1931.

Exercise 3: Visual Onomatopoeia

Some examples of visual onomatopoeia using different fonts and typography skills like spacing and kerning to create emphasis on the words.

Excercise 2: Font Exercise

For this excercise we had to match appropiate fonts to the given titles.

Exercise 1: Initial Logos

For this task we had to use an existing font and make a logo out of our initials. The first logo i designed is for a computer store or seller. I used Garamond as the font type because it is easy to read and makes the logo look very clear. I thought blue would be a suitable colour because blue and yellow are the colours of electric or sparks. Blue was used  because it is easier to see, whereas yellow would have been too bright.

The second logo to the right of the first is a logo for a sculpture artist or store. Again, i used the Garamond font as it was the most suitable font out of the ones given. I wanted to make the object in the background somewhat resemble the texture of a sculptured model.

And finally, the last logo was designed specifically for an art shop. The swirls and shapes in the logo give a clue to that. Gill Sans was the font i used for this one. Since the logo itself is simple, i also wanted a simple font, preferably a sans serif one. Out of all the fonts given, Gill Sans was the one i desired most.