History and Futures
A typeface has been designed for the Welsh language
Really enjoyed the talk on the creation of the Cymru Wales typeface by Colophon foundry and Smörgåsbord in this collaborative project. The style identifies the heritage of the Welsh people and creating a font that’s universal for the Welsh and English language that is used throughout the signage and transport network. This letterform brings a sense of characteristics of it’s the place to the Welsh culture.
Mexico 68
The story behind the production of the iconic Mexico 68 logo (designed by Lance Wyman) is a fantastic narrative on how a design is influenced by the culture and heritage of a country historical past and present. The concept of the historical and contemporary art ‘Op Art’ shows how strong this identity helped to win over the Olympic committee and the people around the world. With plenty of reports revealing the darker political reality in Mexico building up to games, Lance Wyman was provoked to add his piece in his own way by designing 2 doves to put around shop windows. This was to help to keep the peace between the games and the protest happening at the same time.
I really love the iconic graph that Wyman created in his design work for the games. So easy to read and understand through every language which this iconic piece so universal to everyone visiting the games. Simple shapes and pleasing on the eye as visual communication for everyone to enjoy and cuts out the argument of producing things with many languages.
Typeface Design & Font Making Process
Mark Davis
A really insightful conversation with type designer Mark Davis about crafting letterforms with an interesting knowledge of his opinions on styles of fonts. Shows a little demo in creating and adjusting typography with tips, tricks and software advice on what’s best to use. Watching this video really inspired me in my next stage of the workshop challenge and feel I want to explore more in creating typography. It’s making me think of future projects that will allow me to explore and better understanding letterforms and being creative in using this skills for self-initiated or business opportunities.
Font design: 17 top tips to create your own typeface
Creative Bloq published an article on tips in creating your own typeface, when reading this it really identifies the simple ways of beginning the process. I’m keeping this in mind for future reference to any future projects.
Welcome to Typocracy
Welcome to Typocracy a self-publishing initiative to showcase over a hundred unique typographic projects from Fontself.com. This booklet contained various letterforms that were created from digital to handcrafted designs.
The dingbat font called Bordura (right) was some influence on the style I wanted to create for my idea. I wanted to create a letterform by hand firstly before considering rendering a font using digital tools to create my solution. What I enjoy about the Bordura dingbat font is the process of sketching the decorative patterns then translating the embroidery grid system into a pixel form. This project is to build a relationship between traditional textile techniques and the use of modern digital tools. This gives me a direction in the way I can approach my concept with the letterform I wish to create.
Workshop Challenge
I started this week thinking where my influence and idea will come from to show the historical and contemporary aspects to my letterforms. Looking at my five chosen letterform examples the week before I was really drawn to the mosaic signage that I found in town.
I then started working on some sketch ideas of using objects or something tactile to produce a letterform away from the screen. This is a process I need to adapt more and more into my approach as I’ve always been drawn into doing things first on the computer.
I went with the idea of using pebbles from the shingle beach to create a letterform of my town name which I felt was the right material to use. Either creating the typeface with the pebbles or using the shapes to design letterforms.
The next stage is developing the letterform with the stones and then looking at other angles of using the shapes to create other forms that may influence the style.
Here you can see I’ve created one letterform with using the pebbles and then also experimenting in the using the shape of the stones to create a typeface.
The letterform of the ‘O’ as some interesting shape to it but feel this can be limited when producing other letters like an ‘H, L or I’ that don’t have so many curves to it and more straight edge.
This is looking a lot better in using an existing letterform but working on the negative spaces that you can see the shape of the pebbles creating this unique letterform. It’s really taking shape and shows the potential of an interesting font.
I’m really seeing now a serif font starting to work this ridged feel which gives some historical context to the form, work could work nicely. I would have to play and adjust the letterforms to get the balance right so some strokes don’t look so big compared to others. For example, the ‘N’ seems a lot thicker in places compared to the ‘E’, so I need to balance the aesthetic of the letterforms.
Pebble Letterforms
Creating these letterforms was so much fun and really got me thinking on how the pebbles should display on each letterform. Once I put these together I noticed the colour palette came together naturally and shows a really nice combination throughout. The concept of using the pebbles is based on the historical context of when the town was brought down to rubble after 1066 battle of Hastings and then rebuilt. So these unify the building of the history of the town and creating a mosaic to my initial research referring back to the signage in town.
