Alphabet soup... Typeface

We were handed a sheet with various questions, starting to gain a

vague understanding of each others partner. This got my thoughts

rolling, acquiring a few areas in which I would investigate further.

I started looking at football and the world cup, as these were

both strong interests of my partner Yafet.

After a series of worksheets, I felt I was moving to far away from where

I wanted to be, producing more imaged base type.

I moved on to working with existing typefaces

I felt could do with some neatening up.

I went through a process of gradually evening out bowls and

counters, straightening up stems and tucking in crossbars.

Some letters proved harder than others to keep conformed.

For example, the J pictured above nagged me for a while,

whereasthe 'N' was quite a straight forward transformation.

This said, I found the 'M' and 'P' a delight to work with,

ending up with some really pleasing letterforms.

My partners name using the newly adapted font.

The space between the 'A' and 'F' wasn't exactly pleasing but

comparedto the original font it is considerably 'neater'

and a lot more 'clean-cut'.

I added a very simple line to the glyphs, in most cases defining the stem.

Again, for some letters it worked better than others. Above, the ‘A’

worked quite well along with the ‘D’ and ‘T’ below..

At this point I was interested to see the original typeface against the

new lettering. Working on tracing paper, I was able to lay the outlines

over my source and using a broken line, define the old letters

As the hybrid of glyphs game together as a collective, it produced

a very interesting visual. However, the letterings association with

the adjectives had become rather distant, not really flaunting a neat,

clean cut or reserved look in my opinion.

I did however like the contrast between the solid and the broken lines,

adding texture to the letters, a bit more depth.

These letters aren’t reserved in a literal sense, however at a

glance the broken line detail isn’t extremely noticeable.

This leaves a more reserved element to the letters,

noticeable upon closer inspection.

Taking the reserved element further and still thinking about broken line,

I worked this concept into the font Courier New Bld.

I decided to completely remove all serifs from the top of any glyph,

leaving them square cut. The broken line used to depict where

the serifs usually lie, representing the reserved element.

I feel the typeface represents the adjectives in mind fairly well.

It appears ‘neat’ and ‘clean cut’ as a whole and works on the

reserved concept discovered earlier.

A1 POSTER PICTURES;

After the crit, a lot of suggestions were put forth

to keep progressing with our personalised alpha-

bets. One route was to develop lower case in 

the same style and start putting it into context,

writing words and sentences to test its legibility.

I decided to produce a smaller poster on a 

different stock for the lower-case alpha bet.

Illustrator development with the main upper-

case type face. Once the alphabet is finished in

illustrator, it will be a good point to start putting

the type face into sentences, easily able to

 chop and change lettering and wording...