Process Book cum Letter Journal

Copyright © 2010 by Chew Lee Fang

Published by Chew Lee FangPublished in Singapore

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

PROCESS BOOKcum LETTER JOURNAL

>>>>>>>>>>

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z , . < > & ?

Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmis-sion of words, ideas.

Beatrice Warde

“

drawing aletter


Choose a letter from the samples provided. Use only B&W only and sketch the letterform as large as you can.

Repeat and repeat. Take these sketches home and choose the best one.

Get it onto the computer. Identify the typeface, all parts of the anatomy, and be ready to discuss why this typeface is important.

Become familiar with anatomical terminology. The more you know, the smarter you sound. Learn your new language. The language of the designer.

This first project was to gauge our observation and understanding of the letter anatomy. I have chosen to draw an f, as it is also part of my initial.

This was the first time that I drew such a big letter by hand. I had the problem of getting the right proportion of the letter correctly in the first stage.

However, after some refinements and observations, I manage to get the proportion and followed by the details. This exercise have made me paid attention to the details in the letterform itself, and also get to experience the pain that the type designer faced.

This is a great project as it is a stepping stone that intrigues my interest in typography. I am getting more and more excited to receive my next few projects.

Drawing a letter:

project one

Letter anatomy42 x 29.7 cm

ephemeraA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z , . < > & ?

Ephemera are transitory written and printed matter not intended to be retained or preserved.

Collect ephemera from the things we used daily such as receipts, movie ticket, and etc.

Scan it with high resolution, preferably 1200 dpi.

Pick the most interesting part and crop it!

apple pie box, 24 x 24 cm passport, 24 x 24 cm

stamp, 24 x 24 cm tea box tag, 24 x 24 cm

This is a very interesting project. Collecting the items that we used daily to crop and form into something that looks totally different and new.

All along, I have never know things that look so unattractive could transformed into items that will look so beautiful with it’s textures, forms, shapes, and colours.

This project has taught me in paying attention to the details of the items I used daily.

ephemera:

project two

ephemera24 x 24 cm

greyA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z , . < > & ?

A formal study of grey, first using only stamps: the object is to create ebb & flow and shades through the positioning and pacing of repetitious form.

The idea here is to understand by hand (rather than computer) the power of kerning and leading and the shades of gray one can create simply through repetitive forms.

This like this study to be formal, grided, even spacing, considered. The 20 studies should be a gradiation from white to black. A system you create and follow.

Firstly, this project is a pain in the ass!However, the process of this is really fulfilling! I have not done such project before. I’ve re-do this project for three times, and I think I have gain much more than the others.

I’ve learnt things such as the kerning and leading to form different tone variations. I have to take care on all the details and stuff, as all the details slowly comes together to form the bigger picture with different tones.

The printing and packaging process was really fun, as I tried a to stain my own paper with tea bags, to create a stainy, yellowish feel to support my concept of a sunflower. I’ve also used a gunnysack as the packaging to give it an organic feel.

grey:

project three

grey19 x 19 cm (20 pieces)

paint the faceA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z , . < > & ?

A study of my name anatomy.

Drawing of my own name letters and paint it in details.

I had a lot of fun with this project!

Painting the letters one by one makes me learns to appreciate how beautiful the fonts and letters are.

You need steady hands, sharp eyes in order to paint the letters well.

After this project, I am so thankful that there is computer in this world that allows us to create and type letters!

Therefore, I am very impressed with the scribe and illuminator who created the illuminated manuscripts!

paint the face:

project four

indesign exerciseA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z , . < > & ?

This is a series of exercises to get you familiar with some of the most important typographic tools in indesign.

Do these, pay attention to the shifts in legibility, become comfortable with manipulating and pushing, and finally absorb the range and use what you know in the future forever, and ever.

I have never used indesign to create any of my projects before. This is considered to be the first.

Very interesting exploration of kerning and leading to follow. I’ve never really pay attention to the kerning and leading before until this exercise.

I have never imagined that such things such as the kern and lead could make the words and sentence looks good and is more reading friendly.

I think I’ve learnt quite a lot of tools in this indesign exercise, and I am looking forward to the book making projects!

indesign exercise:

project five

the letterA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z , . < > & ?

Choose one of your initials, either upper or lower case.

Select a well-drawn serif or sans-serif typeface-roman or italic, regular or bold weight.

Bold weights may activate the space more evenly the lighter will create more contrast.

Experiment with various square compositions using the masking tool in Adobe illustrator to crop the letterform at various sizes and rotations. Try a range of sizes, weights and typefaces.

Explore figure/ground relationships, the flow between form and counterform, and the spatial proportions of black and white wihtin the square. The letterform dosen’t have to be immediately recognizable but upon examination should be identifiable as that specific letter.

An exploration of cropping the letter, to make it direct and visible, and yet it should not?

This exercise makes me pay attention to the details of the letterform and playing of the counterforms.

Interesting and yet it dosen’t seems as easy as it could be done. The more simple the work is, the more thoughts to be considered behind it.

the letter:

project six

the letter (f)30 x 30 cm

environmentnarrative


Document and photograph type in the environment. B&W only.

Objective: a four panel narrative made up of form and self directed typographic content.

Emphasize figure/ground, balance, contrast, cropping, hierarchy, scale, proportion & pattern to create short narrative.

An outing to kampong glam to take pictures and construct the images into a 4 to 6 panels collage.

Fun process. It’s a shame that I didn’t know kampong glam had such beautiful types and forms within the area.

After the kampong glam outing, I started to love he exploration of the details and forms on the street in Singapore. Therefore, I went on further to explore Little India, Orchard, and etc.

In the 4 panels I have, I explored the different races culture and form a Singapore landscape, as it is all this interesting details and cultures that form up to what Singapore is today.

environment narrative:

project seven

environment narrative30 x 45 cm (4 panels)

Time pours over meWashing me with memoriesRinsing with regrets

haikuA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z , . < > & ?

Final project.

Explore a poem (choose your own) and demonstrate all explorations from semester in book format (perfect, accordion, Japanese stitch...but not spiral bound) at least 30 pages.

One exploration of complete poem per page or spread. Select format, paper, binding carefully, and remember craft must be flawless.

This must reflect the semester’s journey and your mastery of the principals of design.

Time pours over me Washing me with memoriesRinsing with regrets

How beautiful can this haiku be...

This is the last project in typography one, and this is also the project which I had the most fun. Somehow, it feels like the grey project.

I tried to explore different ways to express the beautiful poem, and also not forgetting the CRYSTAL GOBLET.

haiku

project eight

haiku22 x 14 cm

fin.?!?of course not lah...

CUMLETTER JOURNAL>>>>>>>>>>

PROCESS BOOK

...things around us

that you might not have notice...

typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence.

-robert bringhurst

“

history of letter fA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z , . < > & ?

The origin of ‹f› is the Semitic letter that represented the /v/, and originally probably represented either a hook or a club. It may have been based on a comparable Egyptian hieroglyph, such as that for the word mace.

F the Phoenician form of the letter was adopted into Greek as a vowel; and with another form, as a consonant, digamma, which resembled ‹F›, but indicated the pronunciation /w/, as in Phoenician. In Etruscan, ‹F› also represented /w/; however, they formed the digraph ‹FH› to represent /f/; when the Romans adopted the letter, they had already borrowed ‹U› from Greek upsilon to stand for /w/. At this time, the Greek letter phi ‹Φ› represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive, though it has now come to approximate the sound of /f/ in Modern Greek.

The lower case ‹f› is not related to the visually similar long s. The use of the long s largely died out by the beginning of the 19th century, mostly to prevent confusion with ‹f›.1

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F

Proto-Semitic W

Phoenician waw

Etruscan W

Greek Digamma

Roman F

history

In its earliest years, the letter that evolved into our F was an Egyptian hieroglyph that literally was a picture of a snake. This was around 3,000 B.C.

Through the process of simplification over many years, the F began to lose its snakelike character, and by the time it emerged as an Egyptian hieratic form it wasn’t much more than a vertical stroke capped by a small crossbar. With a slight stretch of the imagination, it could be said to look like a nail.1

1 http://www.fonts.com/AboutFonts/Articles/Letterseries/LetterF.htm

Egyptian Cerastes

Early Evolution

Phoenician waw

Greek

the letter f

interesting fsA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z , . < > & ?

Interesting fonts and forms of the letter f. Letter f is simply everywhere!

fs

Celtic alphabets. It’s really amazing on how people can imagine and creates such extraordinary letters with cute and quirky ideas in it.

I love these letters a lot. It really attracts my attention and makes me look into the letters detail.

celtic fs

Ff Ff Ff

FfFf FfFf Ff Ff

Ff Ff FfFf Ff Ff

Exploring the different fonts I have in my computer. I didn’t realise that there are so many unusual and quirky looking fonts until now.

The different shapes and forms gave a different character to the letter f.

quirky fs

my explorationsA B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z , . < > & ?

A fun process of using my thumbprints to form letters.

I love the textures forming up as each thumb comes together to form up a letter.

It is very interesting!

fang thumb pro

I tried using a grid paper to form up spiky character for my name.

I name it leefang tri pro, as the grid paper is made up of triangles.

grided letters

Using google map1, I zoom into the area which, I stayed in Singapore to spot and link the letter forms out of the connecting roads.

1 http://maps.google.com/

leefang map pro

In this piece, I tried using my left, right hand, and left right leg to write.

FUN process!

leefang hand leg pro

fin.?!?yes! it’s for real this time.

references

Cheng, Kelley, and Shirley Surya. Typomofo: type morphing into forms. Singapore: Page One, 2008.

Nyū taipogurafikkusu = New typo-graphics with font samples.. Tōkyō: Pie Bukkusu, 2005.

Cano, Pilar, and Marta Serrats. Typosphere: new fonts to make you think. New York: Collins Design :, 2007.

Meehan, Aidan. Celtic alphabets . New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997.

Documents

Process Book cum Letter Journal