Typeface design

ORIGINAL TYPEFACE DESIGN

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AMANDA KERN || GRDS 709 TYPOGRAPHY STUDIO I || PROFESSOR TRUDY ABADIE SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN || JANUARY 30, 2010

ORIGINAL TYPEFACE DESIGN | TABLE OF CONTENTSPR

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AMANDA KERN || GRDS 709 TYPOGRAPHY STUDIO I || PROFESSOR TRUDY ABADIE || SAVANNAH COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN || JANUARY 30, 2010

DESIGN NARRATIVE ............................................................................... 3

BRAINSTORMING ................................................................................ 4-7

TYPEFACE DESIGN PROCESS .............................................................. 8-9

FINAL TYPEFACE DESIGN ................................................................ 10-11

PROMO PIECE........................................................................................ 12

TYPEFACE USAGE ................................................................................. 13

ORIGINAL TYPEFACE DESIGN | DESIGN NARRATIVEPR

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Designing your own typeface is not an easy task. The creative process always begins with an idea. Many of you have, at one point or another, thought of designing your own typeface. Maybe your handwriting is consistent enough to convert it into a font, or maybe you have found a good typeface for a particular design but would prefer a variation of it. This is your opportunity to make it happen.

In order to do a good job and not duplicate existing faces, you must begin with research. Please read The TypeRight Guide to Ethical Type Design. Pay close attention to the term revival. If you are using another typeface as a foundation for your design, you may be creating a revival of a typeface, not an original design.

OBJECTIVEPART 11. Brainstorm the typeface concept.2. Research to make sure this is an original idea.3. Have a clear idea of the end product.4. Consider the end use of this design. Will it be used for display only or for both display and

body text? Based on the time limitations of this course, you will probably want to work on uppercase characters only.

5. Begin by drawing a few characters that combine vertical, horizontal, diagonal, and curved strokes. In his interview, Mr. Carter suggested beginning with the letters H, O, and D. Use pencil strokes first and then ink them in. You may want to use tracing paper for the initial drawings so you can trace over them.

6. Define the specific traits of your typeface—weight, width, and overall texture and color. Keep drawing.

7. Post your final sketches. Continue working. Please e-mail your professor if you have any questions or if you would like feedback along the way.

PART 21. Continue drawing the rest of the characters.2. Scan the characters and begin tracing them, using a vector-based program, such as

Adobe Illustrator.3. Clean up the characters by reducing the number of points needed to create them.4. Print your work to check it.5. Work on the spacing of your characters using character combinations such as O and C; V and

A; and I and H. These combinations will help you standardize the kerning.6. Test your spacing by setting a few words.7. Post your full typeface design on the discussion board. Your post should include the name of

the design; its concept and intended use; and a brief on the process. Which areas seemed to be the hardest, and why? Are you satisfied with the design?

8. Visit the discussion board and provide feedback for at least two other designs.

ORIGINAL TYPEFACE DESIGN | BRAINSTORMINGPR

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For a few years now I’ve been wanting to create a font using my daughter’s handwriting. I suppose this idea came about a year or so after she learned to write. Everyone admired her handwriting at such a young age that I’ve been saving pages and pages of her handwriting over the years for when I had time to make a font.

Every year at Christmas I have always wished I had her handwriting because since she was five we have created our own Christmas cards with her her handwriting and illustrations. It’s been torture at times for both of us to go through the process to get the perfect idea down onto paper. In 2006 she wrote “Merry Christmas” and then her name that I printed, however, she wrote inside EVERY card to sign our cards.

BRAINSTORMING


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In 2007 I had my son and so we thought a little more simplistically with our design to save time. We decided Hope would write “Happy Holidays from the Kern Family” and sign the back. She also created the arms and hat for a snowman that we glued buttons for. It’s never been an easy process to get her handwriting just right for the cards. We often went through writing the words several times. By this time she was in kindergarden and was more careful with her writing and often times got more frustrated writing the words when she’d make mistakes. it was tough explaining how photoshop could help us fix little mistakes. It again wished I had a font made to help ease the process. These cards were almost more complicated because gluing buttons became more time consuming, even more so because Hope then drew the carrot nose onto the snowman.

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In 2008 I had plans to screenprint our Christmas cards. I had never screenprinted myself before so I was excited to experience the process. Hope again illustrated pictures and type for our holiday cards. Her type began to get a little more creative for the front where she made her own serif bubble letters and the back had Hope’s new swirly signature. It was tough to explain to a young child why they had to think simplistically with color due to the screen printing process. After burning the screens I learned that my meshcount was slightly lower than what was needed to pull out some of the detail in her handwriting and illustrations so we ended up printing these on laser in the end. As you can see, again Hope was put through the process of creating lots of type and illustrations until we ended up with just the right solution for our holiday cards. We learned in 2008 to save a little time by having a premade signature, which included Hope’s illustration of our family on the inside of the card.

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In 2009 it was much tougher to get Hope’s cooperation with our cards. She grew frustrated with a few of our ideas and I quickly was running out of time, so after having she finish edthe type and illustrations for the inside and back of our cards I decided to hand render the type with a “believe miracles will happen” theme. Our cards were professionally printed on pearl paper and we again saved on time with not only having the signatures put on the interior but my photography of our family was included within the card. I’ve continued to get many compiments and apparently it was the conversational “card” received of the year by most I sent it to. Of course I give a lot of credit to Hope, who’s handwriting again helped give the cards a personal touch that no normal font could do.

Since she’s learned to write I’ve kept a collection of her handwriting and illustrations and knew someday I’d make a font with her writing. Every year she writes many stories and letters to our friends and family, even to Santa and I find myself keeping them for sentimental value, but also in hopes to someday create a font that helps show the evolution of her handwriting.

BRAINSTORMING

REASONING

ORIGINAL TYPEFACE DESIGN | TYPEFACE DESIGN PROCESSPR

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For this project I decided to focus on the upper and lowercase letterforms of Hope’s current handwriting. We also made an attempt at bubble letters because she really enjoys creating more decorative letters lately. When we began I wasn’t quite sure how much the font creation application would allow us include into the font. After exploring the options I learned that most online tools that allow font creation only include one aspect of a font family so we focused solely on her handwriting rather than the bubble letters to complete the font.

TYPEFACE DESIGN PROCESS

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After Hope completed her ABC’s and 123’s I accessed the font creation site, http://www.yourfonts.com/, to learn more about the process to create the font. In doing so I recalled all the characters that could and should be included in a font. So I had Hope create more characters, many of which she had never seen before.


ORIGINAL TYPEFACE DESIGN | FINAL TYPEFACE DESIGNPR

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The font creation process was fairly straight forward, but very tedious. I elected to scan the letters and then place them into the template because I knew Hope might be challenged understanding the lines and controlling her sizing. The template had lines to help you know the baseline, x-height, ascender and descender lines. Once complete you upload the template to the web site and the font was created. The only downfall is that there is a fee ($9.95) to purchase the font after it’s been created. You do get to see a preview before deciding whether or not to purchase the font.

FINAL TYPEFACE DESIGN

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Here is the final typeface design that we’ve called “Hope - second grader”. This is certainly worth revisiting to include variations as her handwriting evolves. The biggest downfall of using the font web site I used is that it only creates the font in truetype format. If I were to revisit this it would be worth investing in a font creation software that gave more capabilities to create open type, postscript, and more involved font families. However, even using this web site was a great experience to gain a greater appreciation for typeface design, which is definitely a tedious process to create even the simplest of fonts.

This typeface obviously could be used for personal projects such as the holiday cards, however, Hope has been talking non-stop about creating her own book (after seeing me make a few blurb books) so it could also be used as needed for projects such as children’s books. She’s convinced once she makes a book she’s going to take it to the bookstore and they will sell it for her. After seeing all her work over the years on our holiday cards and now in her handwriting for the font you never know, it might not be long before she has her own book made using her own font.


ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz1234567890!@#$%^&*()_+=-~©®®©™£¢•

This font was made using Hope Kern’s second grade handwriting.

ORIGINAL TYPEFACE DESIGN | PROMO PIECEPR

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A promotional postcard was created for the font for Veer, a company well known for offering exlusive typefaces.

PROMO PIECE

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I’ve elected to use the typeface created in a way that I felt it would most appropriately and most often be used. Notes or greeting cards would most likely be the way the typeface would be used to give a personal touch. In this case I worked with my daugther to create a panda illustration that would be suitable. In the end the type was simple and to the point to communicate the message. After using the typeface in a project I wished there was a bolder version to use.

TYPEFACE USAGE

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Typeface design