Advanced Typography - Task 3
Glen Owen / 0354952
Advanced Typography / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Taylor's University
LECTURES
Week 14 (05/07/2023)
Week 13 (28/06/2023)
Mr. Vinod is on oversea so there's no class
Week 12 (21/06/2023)
In this week, instead of giving feedbacks Mr. Vinod helped to the student in the class directly if one of them still has some trouble in their work.
Week 11 (14/06/2023)
In this week is the same as Week 10, we just showed our progress and refine some glyphs that are needed to be refined.
Week 10 (07/06/2023)
In this week, we had to show our progress on creating our typeface in Adobe Illustrator to get feedbacks from Mr. Vinod. After getting feedbacks, we may continue doing our typeface and do some refinements.
Week 9 (31/05/2023)
In this week, we had to show our first progress on making a typeface which is to show our research proposal to Mr. Vinod so he could approve the idea or not. If one of our idea is approved, then we may continue making our typeface.
PRE-RECORDED LECTURES & PREVIOUS TASK
INSTRUCTION
Fig 1.1 Advanced Typography MIB
TASK 3 - Type Exploration and Application
Proposal
We were instructed to come up with 3 ideas for our final task based on our interests. In this case, my interests are Entertainment Design, comic book, and futuristic things.
Fig 2.1 Proposal (Week 9, 31/05/2023)
After some thoughts and consideration, me and Mr. Vinod agrees with the first idea which is to make a futuristic font for future games.
Exploration
The term "futuristic" is kind of broad to be honest because there's a lot of style for this kind of font. Not only that, I had to make the font looks distinctive so that it doesn't look like other futuristic font that is available in the internet. So I compiled some references and study their style so I can came up with my own style.
Fig 3.1 - 3.5 References
Source of references:
Sketches and Digitization
Fig 4.1 First sketch idea (Week 9, 01/06/2023) Fig 4.2 Reference for Fig 4.1
My first attempt on making a futuristic font is quite a dissapointment. The first idea is too make a futuristic font that are look thick like the typeface that is used in Honkai Impact 3rd Title. Despite of a dissapointment, I tried making the uppercase design with it to test if it works or not.
Fig 4.3 Uppercase letterforms based on the first idea (Week 10, 06/06/2023)
After some time of looking at this typeface, me and Mr. Vinod agrees that this typeface doesn't work because it's kind of condensed. Mr. Vinod suggested me to do more exploration and I did. After spending some time exploring, I tried to design another futuristic typeface but this time I design from the letter "O", "H", "n", and "o" because from these glyphs we can derive many more glyphs.
Fig 4.4 - 4.5 New sketches (Week 10, 07/06/2023)
It took me a while on which "H" I should design but in the end I end up combining their design together into one new "H". It's also crucial for me to say that the typeface I am about to design is designed base on my first typeface I made at Semester 1 (you can look the process of me making my first typeface here).
Fig 4.6 Typeface I made from Semester 1 used as reference
Fig 4.7 New design I made based on the sketches (Week 10, 07/06/2023)
After designing those glyphs, I derived the first 10 glyphs in the uppercase which is from "A" to "J".
Fig 4.8 Attempts on designing "A" to "J" based on Fig 4.7 design (Week 10, 07/06/2023)
I tried to confirm whether I should continue this design or not to Mr. Vinod and he said that it's kind of busy because of the many use of white stripes. After looking at the design again, I supposed I agree with Mr. Vinod that this design is busy. So to solve this problem, I removed the stripes and make the glyphs looks normal.
Fig 4.9 Full set of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and punctuations (Week 11, 14/06/2023)
In my 1 week timeframe of designing the full set of glyphs in Fig 4.9 from Week 10 to - Week 11, I struggled the most in designing the curves in "J", "j", and "s". Especially for "s" I had to watch Youtube tutorials to make it. In the end, I designed it based on Futura Std Typefaces. Mr. Vinod feedback on this design is that I need to change the "8" and some of the small punctuations. He gave a guide to the page that tutors me on how to make small punctuations (here's the link to the tutorial page). He also told me to change the paranthesis because it looks circular.
Fig 4.10 Refined version of Fig 4.9 and some testing (Week 12, 21/06/2023)
As for the process of me making the glyphs, it's quite complicated as some of the glyphs I used Futura Std as reference. I used the letter "O" to derives some capital letters like "Q", "C", and "D". I used "H" to derive "A", "B", and more.
Fig 4.11 Some base structures I used to construct my letterform (Week 10, 11/06/2023)
Fig 4.12 Some similarity in structures (Week 10, 11/06/2023)
Fig 4.13 making the curves in lowercase letterform using "o" (Week 10, 11/06/2023)
After I am finally done with my design, it's time for me to make it into a working typeface by exporting the design into a ttf .format. Unlike in Semester 1 where I used FontLab, I'll be using FontForge because the trial version of my FontLab has expired. How I transfer this glyphs to FontForge is by exporting them one by one in SVG Format.
Fig 4.14 Glyphs in FontForge (Week 12, 23/06/2023)
After my first experience in using FontForge, I could give some pros and cons about this software. The only pro that I could give is that it's a free software. The cons however..... :
- They only gave you the guidelines for descender, ascender, and baseline. So you had to manually add more guidelines for the cap height and x-height
- Sometimes the file can be corrupted so I suggest to duplicate more than one file just in case some unwanted scenario happened.
- Every time you wanted to transform the scale of the glyphs, you have to manually do it in the toolbar
- It's a free software, so expect some problems to happen while you are exporting the glyphs.
Fig 4.15 manually giving the cap-height and x-height (Week 12, 23/06/2023)
As for the kerning however it can be quite tricky, it is easy to kern in FontForge because you can just drag them to close each other but sometimes it can came up with unwanted scenario like this.
Fig 4.13 Normal kerning (Week 12, 23/06/2023)
Fig 4.16 Not good kerning because it has that space between the L and O (Week 12, 23/06/2023)
Application
Posters
After I did all of the kerning for my glyphs, I started to apply it into a poster just like the one Mr. Vinod shares in his Facebook examples of students work and so here's my attempt on doing that.
Fig 5.1 Application of the typeface (Week 13, 27/06/2023)
After what I just witnessed in Week 14, turns out I need to make more than 1 application.... So I decided to make 1 more poster and another application which is to make a cover for my art to look like a PS5 game cover. I made this typographic posters in InDesign.
Fig 5.2- 5.3 Another posters... [The one on the right is made by Mr. Vinod so I should be thankful that he suddenly helped me] (Week 14, 05/07/2023)
PS5 Game Cover
Fig 5.3 First attempt on making the cover (Week 14, 05/07/2023)
The first attempt didn't go well as Mr. Vinod said that there's some missing aspects in here and so I tried to refine it more. FYI, The image I used in here is an old artwork that I made.
Fig 5.4 Refined version of Fig 5.3 (Week 14, 05/07/2023)
He decided that the image needs to be another image. He suggested me to use some bright color image so in rush I used OpenArt AI to generate the image I wanted.
Fig 5.5 Variation of the game cover (Week 14, 05/07/2023)
I showed it again to Mr. Vinod and he asked to double the point size of the title.
Fig 5.6 Final Version of the Game Cover (Week 14, 05/07/2023)
Movie Poster Cover
Turns out I need one more application again. This time I recycled the image from fig 5.3 and make it a movie poster
Fig 5.7 Movie poster (Week 14, 05/07/2023)
FINAL SUBMISSION
Fig 5.1 - 5.5 Guren 2.0 Typefamily (Week 13, 28/06/2023)
Fig 5.6 - Fig 5.9 Application of typefaces in Poster Form(Week 14, 05/07/2023)
Fig 5.10 Application of PS5 Game Cover (Week 14, 05/07/2023)
Fig 5.11 Application of Movie Poster(Week 14, 05/07/2023)
Fig 5.12 Final PDF Submission (Week 14, 05/07/2023)
FEEDBACKS
Week 14 (05/07/2023)
General Feedback Insufficient completion, add more application
Specific Feedback: for the game cover, give more aspect and double the size of the headings
Week 13 (28/06/2023)
General Feedback : all is good
Specific Feedback : adjust the paranthesis and 2
Week 12 (21/06/2023)
General Feedback : - (halfway importing glyphs to FontForge)
Specific Feedback : - (halfway importing glyphs to FontForge)
Week 11 (14/06/2023)
General Feedback : fairly consistent
Specific Feedback : small punctuations need to be bigger and some of the glyphs needs to be refined
Week 10 (07/06/2023)
General Feedback : lack of exploration and testing, do not use existing font to create your font
Specific Feedback : does looks futuristic but it just doesn't work. Try to minimize the business of the new design
Week 9 (31/05/2023)
General Feedback : specify every idea you are proposing
Specific Feedback : for the first idea it could be either revamping an existing font or make a new font for future games to use
REFLECTION
Experience
In the first week of making the fonts I had no problem on making it since I have experienced this kind of sensation back in Semester 1. Usually I felt trembled because of the timeframe, but as time goes on, I feel nothing when I designed the whole glyphs in just 4 days. I managed my time effectively in this project even though I still had other projects in the palm of my hand. Overall, the experience I had here is really different than what I experience in Semester 1 because now that I experienced in making a glyphs, I can just follow the flow and had my job done.
Observation
My observation on this project is specifically at exporting the glyphs to FontForge. Since FontForge is a free software and a software that I have never experience before, I explored the toolbars that are available and even though I am not quite familiar with it, I tried to be familiar with it.
Findings
My only advice for designer who wants to design a glyphs, start designing the letter "O",
"H", "n", and "o" because from that 4 letters you can derive more letters from it because this 4 letters act as the base. My other advice is that if you had the chance to use FontLab, then just use that instead of FontForge.
FURTHER READINGS
Fig 6.1 Typographic design: Form and Communication
I continue to read this book for further guidance as I am designing the letterforms. It's a great book and I really recommend designers to read this if they wanted to design a full typeface.
Comments
Post a Comment