Reklame Script is a quite a wide font, this could represent a variety of things that I don't want to. It could communicate weight, boldness, courage, overall.. nothing really that would describe my partner as he seems rather shy and modest.
So first, was to make it thinner, this would redesign the full typeface anyway but as well as this I wanted the letters to join up to represent his appearance, and organisation skills. It shows formality and punctuality which were key anatomy points I wanted to have in my typeface.
I printed off a lowercase 'a' with a very low opacity to guide me on shape and form and then i drew from there making the form thinner and slightly more diagonal with a longer tail to join to the next letter. This is the scanned sketch:
From here I will import the image into illustrator and begin tracing my scanned photo to give a more accurate and detailed representation of my letter and to observe if any adjustments need sorting.
I thought I'd try out the skills I had learned in my induction by using the pen tool to trace the scanned image until the letter was finished.
This took a lot of swearing, frustration and chocolate because of the angles but I eventually got the hang of it again.
I then realised whilst in the process of tracing it that my sketch was hardly accurate. Yet again... Making my own life difficult as usual.
After finishing I'd realised I had screwed up one of the angles at the bottom of the 'a' so I racked my brains to remember what to do to sort it and then remembered the 'alt' function!
After having a good play around I managed to sort it all out!
Two anchor points were made from the original path and were ben outwards to fit the sketch a lot better.
The next part was to colour it in which in my opinion is probably the easiest bit!
And there we have my final letter 'a' design! The process was long and tiresome but lack of illustrator knowledge is going to hold me back until I learn more through focus groups and self learning.
I will now continue to blog this process for each letter but instead of going through all the stages as in depth as this one I will show the original letter form, my sketch modifying it and my finished letter to give a clear view as to what I have done.
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W was made just by combining the U and the V producing this:
X
Y
Z
After the whole alphabet was finished I had another six glyphs to go! I chose most used ones like the following:
My first was an @ symbol, I chose this so I could incorporate my 'a' into it which would make life a bit easier! Here's my process:
After duplicating the 'a' I used the pen tool to create the swirl around it, this worked brilliantly.
Next was the question mark, yet again I wanted to use shapes I'd already created to keep it all continuous. For this all I did was flip the 'I' around and it was done!
Full stops and commas are the main factors of basic punctuation so these needed to be added, to sort them out, all I did was use the brush tool and pen tool to make the circles and added the shape to it.
And finally, last but not least, the brackets! To do this, I used the pen tool to make the angular curve and then duplicated and flipped it to make the second! Job done!
The main typeface is now done and I am left with this:
After finishing the digital collection of letters and glypths I went to the digital print room and got it printed A1 to attach to the A1 tracing paper on which we needed to present it.
Each letter and glyth were then individually traced with fine liner and then coloured with a brush marker. During the process there were moments where I decided I wasnt happy with something and therefore manually changed it with my pens, in particular, this relates to the question mark which i widened and presented clearer.
Next was to design a name badge for my partner Andy. Keeping my alphabet in perspective i wanted to keep it basic but not too boring.
I set the letters out next to each other and was pleased that the objective of joining each letter together was suceeded. That was it, after I laid it out, I didn't want it to be presented any other way, so what I did was I created a path in illustrator to surround the full name which I would guide the laser cutter with and create a sticker for Andy to wear. Done.
And here is another view of the name badge without the laser-cutter guide.
Our group crit on the final product of our typefaces was so useful. I gathered some incredibly positive feedback on the work I had produced and the process in which I confronted the brief.
All the effects I wanted to transmit through the stylisation of the typeface was successful including the joining up of the letters and clean appearance.
Advancements I was told I could make with the typeface was to bring out uppercase letters and experiment with numbers and a more varied selection of glypths. I decided that in my own time I would attempt to expand on the typeface and try to improve it as much as I can, maybe to the point of exporting it as an actual typeface and publishing it for others to use.
After everything was finished we were given a mini brief to present our typeface with the name of a brand/company/label that we felt suited the nature of our typeface.
I put in some research and decided that the card making company 'Hallmark' was a great representation of my typeface as it included all the effects and feel my letters presented.
I first used colour in the sense of Black on White but after I had finished using the pen tool to vector everything out, I decided to make the colour scheme a bit more 'card' like and went with a baby blue background with white type laid over it.
Giving the typeface a context gave me more confidence in the work as it worked really well in an industry standard. This typeface will definitely need improvement and publishing!
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