Studio Brief 2 Typeface design

Typeface Design

Brief

For this project, we've been tasked to create our own bespoke typeface, which should effectively communicate the given adjective we have. We have to base our type designs on Müeller Brockmanns classic and lead typefaces which are:

Garamond                Berthold                        Bodon

Calson                      Helvetica                   Clarendon

Baskerville                  Univers                           Times

To begin with, I started exploring each one of Müeller-Brockmanns classic and lead typefaces, considering what gives each of these typefaces a different personality, what makes one typeface appear bigger or clearer, darker or warmer than another. We began to explore and evaluate each of the fonts and create manifestos on what make the fonts work so well.

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Definitions for given word: ERRATIC

1. Deviating from the proper usual or proper course of conduct
2. Having no certain or definite cause

Word bank for: ERRATIC (   =words that i think are interesting to use for a typeface )

• Wondering
• Unpredictable       

Definition:

( tending to change  suddenly and without reason or warning, and therefore not able to be depended on )

• Anomalies    

Definition:

( something that is unusual enough to be noticeable or seem  strange )

• Abnormal
• Manic    

Definition:

(excited or anxious in a way that causes a lot of physical  activity )

• Queer
• Unstable   

Definitions:

( not firm and therefore not strong, safe, or likely to last )

( An unstable person  suffers from sudden and extreme  changes of mental  state )

• Shifted
• Bizarre  

Definition

( Strange or Unusual )

• Dicey
• Oddball
• Top-Heavy
• Strange
• Dubious
• Glitch     

Definition

( a small problem or fault that prevents something from being successful or working as well as it should)

• Unusual
• Spontaneous     

Definition

( Happening  naturally, without planning or encouragement )

• Spasmodic
• Devious
• Irregular 
• Whimsical    

Definition

(  unusual and using imagination )

( Whimsical also describes actions that change suddenly and for no obvious reason )

• Weird
• Peculiar
• Directionless

Books looked into:

• The elements of typographic style ( Robert Bringhurst )
• Thinking with type ( Ellen Lupton ) 
• Basic Typography ( Ruedi Ruegg & Godi Frohlich )
• Amusing ourselves with Death ( Neil Postman )
• Using Type ( Michael Harkins )

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Individual Fonts Manifestos from Group Session and Views

Garamond

A versatile serif font that has deep historical context, yet a contemporary and harmonious design. Legible in a number of sizes, weights and languages, it was built for the very purpose of disseminating a complex and significant range of information. 

Out of all of the given serif fonts, I think that Garamond is the one I prefer due to it being a little more simple than the others in terms of certain letters like Q. With its mixture of thin & thick stokes it just looks nicer and looks more classy.

Caslon

Designed by William Caslon in the early 18th Century, this typeface is part of a group of serif typefaces. With short ascenders and descenders, this specific typeface has the purpose of fitting more characters on a page whilst at the same time leaving sufficient blank space for aesthetics and eligibility. The italic P, Q, V, W and Z all have a suggestion of a swash giving the font a hand-
rendered feel.

Baskerville

Created in 1754 by an illiterate, self-taught printer, Baskerville went on to be considered one of the most legible typefaces there is. Due to it's academic qualities it is used by many universities to make statements stronger and more believable. As Baskerville was a perfectionist, it's crisp edges and embellishments and long running history make it a classic. It is considered a elegant and soft yet strong and fine quality typeface.

Bondoni

The bold graphic consistency and the fact each letter works together and would easily be reproduced. The type was designed as a transitional form between Fournier and Baskerville. It is important to consider who could read at the time (not many) and the fact the Church would be the main source of literature for the country at the time. The high contrast in stroke weight is a recognisable feature of this type design and gives a grand and glamorous feel to the type. The typeface was deigned for signage and for higher end companies given the large divide in class at the time. Bodoni used to be a typographic tool to show a new modern and classy typeface for a company or business. The elegant and graphic and bold letterforms echoed Italian design and set a bench mark for the future of Italian culture.

Clarendon

A strong British typeface created to reflect the aspects of the Victorian British Empire. The thick strokes melding into thick slab-serifs and fat ball terminals represent the hearty and unstoppable aspects of the British Empire.

Berthold

Designed in 1896 and released in 1898, this typeface was created in the wake of the industrial revolution. It's primary use in industrial advertising and large signage. The less rigid, geometric form of the type positively impacts the legibility of the type and the many variations make it very versatile. The understated forms of the type, and idiosyncrasies set it apart from other typefaces and make it perfect for statistical information with an emotional undertone. The typeface is also devoid of the political baggage associated with Russian constructivism and Bauhaus. Simple in a time that was far from simple; this is one of the first typefaces to have a fixed stroke width, making it the original sans serif typeface.

Times

Times is a serif monotype creation made in 1931 for The Times newspaper, it was commissioned by the newspaper as Stanley Morrison criticised the current type, commenting on how badly printed and typographically antiquated. The font was drawn and developed by Victor Lardent, an employee in the advertising department of The Times newspaper.There are variations of Times New Roman such as linotype created 'Times Roman', both monotype and linotype have merged but some key differences between 'Times Roman' and 'Times Roman' such as small serifs which more of a flourish on 'Times Roman', more italic style serifs added to the letters while 'Times New Roman' are more clear and straight. Times New Roman is still frequently used in book typography and many other publications, especially because of it's adoption in Microsoft products, it has become one of the most widely used typefaces in history due to it's legibility and directness. 

Helvetica

Helvetica was created specifically to be neutral, to not give any impression or have any meaning in itself. This neutrality was paramount, and based on the idea that type itself should give no meaning. Designed in 1957 by a Swiss graphic designer, this was a time when many companies were looking for a change as it was post war Europe. It was the direct opposite of the fancy and decorative typography that covered advertisements at the time. Still to this day it remains legible and versatile as you can use it in motion, one reason it's popular for signage, automaker and airline logos.

Univers

Univers is a swiss designed sans serif typeface. It is known for it's legibility due to it being the first typeface to form a family of consistent designs. Due to it's legibility it is used for a lot of signage in both Westminster and throughout Switzerland and in brands like Swiss Air and Ebay. In terms of design the typeface has quite tall x-heights which is quite common with san serif fonts. It is quite a neutral design with a very subtle yet visible contrast in stroke. This sight contrast in stroke combined with curved terminals gives the typeface a sense of uniqueness, making it different to a more standard typeface. The added curves also give a sense of friendliness which along with the legibility make it ideal for it's usage throughout UK tests and exams.

fontshop blog
amusing ourselves with death

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Group Crit

After having a group crit on my word, i explained that i wanted to try something with glitches and instead of making a normal type faces, i wanted to go away from the norm and create a digital typeface for media such as TV shows, adverts, youtube videos ext. They really like my idea and told me to go with this idea. I Sketched up some rough ideas to try for my other two fonts for the next group crit. The ones that stood out to me was combining both the serif and sans serif fonts to try and get a feeling got something deviating from the norm. The other that I liked was splitting the letter into layers and moving each one around differently to make it look erratic. But the main idea that I want to go with is the glitch concept because I think it just sounds more fun and exciting to do. 

Initial ideas:

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My Manifesto for typeface

Glitch

I aim to create a digital display typeface using motion graphics to portray what it means to be ‘erratic’. This typeface will incorporate an unpredictability associated with people who are erratic by making the text warp as if there was a glitch with the typeface. This typeface will purely be aimed towards digital media such as being used on adverts, TV shows, YouTuber videos, etc. If need be, this glitch font will be able to be used as a regular font but I wanted to create something different and out of the norm, just like being erratic.

Sans

Create a type face that deviates from the normal rules of type design by combining certain aspects from both san serif and serif fonts together. It will Play on the how serifs are used in the type face while also playing with the different weights of each of these fonts. 

Displacement

Similar to ‘Glitch’, this font aims to create a flat typeface that has an erratic tone to it that will be similar to the digital style of the ‘Glitch’ typeface concept.

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Animography

Animography is a webshop/typefoundry that specialises in animated typefaces. These animated typefaces are easy to use, customizable and scalable without any loss of quality. These motion typefaces look awesome and a great place to gain some inspiration on my type design. Their animated typefaces are Created using Adobe After Effects with each glyph in a separate composition. A controller-composition serves as a central point from which you can customize all the glyphs in one go. These animated typefaces are commonly used within TV commercials, presentations, on-stage concert graphics, etc. They also offer tutorials on how to use after effects to create your own motion typeface. While these are at a higher stage than my novice skill level in after effects, they where great to gain some insight on what can be accomplished using this program.

One of the ones that stood out to me was a typeface called webmeister, Its animation was very interesting although the font itself looked overly complicated. It reminds me of the Architecture and it look like the old PS2 boot up sequence. the manifesto for the type is: 

Webster is an extensive animated typeface with a nerdy look. It comes with uppercase, lowercase, numbers, punctuation and special characters. All together it counts over a 150 glyphs. With 13 customizable features, you can create over a gazillion looks. That's right, over a gazillion! Due to the massive amount of layers and expressions it can be a little slow to render, but that's small price for good looks!

http://animography.net

Placarms

Video Hive has a wide range of these animater typefaces, each one having its own unique look to them. Placarms created a page to view all of these with this statment. ‘Sometimes a basic typography animation is not enough to express your idea. Then you need an Animated Typeface. Basically it’s an animated font where every character are pre-animated and you only need to pick the right symbol for your titles. I have selected the best Animated Typefaces available on Video Hive. Each of them feature full alphabet – letters, numbers and symbols. Most comes with After Effects project. Some are standard video files with alpha channel from Motion Graphic section. Using these sets will enable you to create great and professional looking titles in seconds.’

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Research on Different types of Glitches

looking into different types of digital glitches for refrence:

Image glitch GIF. It looks as if there are multiple layers of the same image being distorted  and changing its RGB colours. 

VHS effects. Not a actual glitch but the effect it has dose look like it could be useful 

Some Free stock footage I've come across from Youtube to help make my glitch font. Each one has a different look to it and while I like the VHS style i don't know how well it will come across, i think the first two will have a better look but there's only one way to find out…..

Links to stock footage:

(1)  Glitch overlay
(2)  Glitch effect
(3)  VHS effect 1 / VHS effect 2 / VHS rewind effect

Also found this on one of my suggested videos (The Glitch) which has introduced me to a youtube channel called CorridorDigital (Channel) that work with special effects and create some really cool and interesting videos that I really like. I've now subscribed to them as they also do software introductions and walkthroughs on how they went about making their videos. thanks to looking for glitch on youtube if found this channel along with RocketJump (link), samandniko (link) and a few others, all of them are pretty cool. That might be a biased opinion though, as I've always had a soft spot for anything using special effects/ anything thats animated. I did have to stop myself watching them at one point as I was that hooked to them, I wasn't getting any work done.

 

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Experiments

First attempt at using After Effects. I used a mixture of online resources and talking to some of the computer resource staff to help me gain a rough idea of how to use it (also watched some of CorridorDigital tutorials on After Effects to help me further). While I already have a knowledge on how to use Adobe
Premier, I wanted to learn a new software. That, and that I have always wanted to use after effects and this project is a great starting point. To begin with, I Knew I wanted to use a sans serif font for this typeface due to looking into 'digital' glitches so I went with the most commonly used one, Helvetica.

While looking into glitches, there seemed to be a a common trait they have in which the original image is distorted across different lays of Red, Green, Blue and white, Plus the colours that they make. Using the second stock footage I added this distort patten to each of the RGB layers. I'm happy with the way this test has gone and now that I've got this one down, I can try using different combinations of stock footage to try and create some interesting effect.

Before creating any more GIF letters, I wanted to experiment with removing certain colours from the effect to see how it would affect the letter. Removing yellow (second from the left) seems to be the better looking out of the 4 experiments by making it look look quite interesting whilst the other letters don't really look that different to the original. I'm going to incorporate this with my next letter to see how it will look when it's in motion with the effects on it.

          

    

While creating these letters,  I thought back to the word erratic and to one of its definitions which was something being unpredictable. With this, i went about creating each letter differently and causing the glitch effect to appear almost randomly and seeing it with these three letters glitching next to to each other, I think it works. Each one of these have been created using a different combination of glitch effects, so B has the glitch effect with the VHS effect 2, 

C has the glitch effect with the glitch overlay on top and finally D has the glitch effect on it twice but using different levels. Each one has a unique look to them whist also looking like they are the same style. After showing some peers from my course, they seem to be very happy with the rout I'm going down for my type face and in the intern crit, John said that our of the three typeface ideas I brought, that this one is the one to go with and mentioned trying to create some realisms for the typeface to see how it will look on adverts once the typeface is done.

my other ideas:

I created this font with the intention of trying to create the glitch effect on a flat typeface. It looks all right but I think as a alphabet that I there are better options to go with.

This idea was basically going along with one of the definitions for erratic that was deviating from the norm. with this, i went about creating a font that doesn't follow the guidelines given by combining it with both serif (Garamond) and sans serif (Helvetica) to create something different. I did really like this idea but after creating the first few letters for my Glitch typeface I knew I wanted to do that one instead.

Glitch letters Continued:

Had some technical difficulties over the week with after effects which caused me to get all of the letters done in under 2 days but I'm happy with how they look.

 

Feedback

Dose This typeface work as a display font for the likes of tv shows and adverts?

“Yes, I feel like a TV show would be the perfect application for this font. I really like the way you have thought of an alternative market rather than just print.”

“Definitely,  the boldness of the letterforms and the animated gifs would be perfect for on screen use.”

“Yes, because the typeface is so minimal that it suits the erratic motion of the glitch effects, it isn't too much and looks great.”

Some of the letters of the typeface have different sizes/weights to them to try and keep to the erratic behaviour. Dose these letters add to the font or do they look out of place?

“when using a sans serif font like this could easily make them look ’out of place’due to the linear stroke weight. However, you have a rational justification for this so I believe it adds to the typeface”

“The A dose look a little out of place at first but it fits in with what you where aiming for with the font”

“If there where more letter that where thinner it would be more effective”

“They add to the font and make it feel more bespoke and glitchy.”

Each letter has a random set of ‘glitches’ to them so no two letters are the same. This is so that when it is used for words it will look like there unpredictable in their glitches. Is this accomplished with the font?

“I feel like you have accomplished what you intended. However, I believe a linear glitch on all the letters might make the typeface more legible.”

“It would work with a few sections of the letters but looking at just the typeface with 26 letters glitching at different time might be hard to look at.”

 Dose the glitch effect portray an erratic behaviour? Why?

“Yes, I agree it dose portray erratic behaviour due to the fact pace and randomness of the ‘glitch’. I also weirdly think the random behaviour of the effect helps achieve this.”

“Yes, but this would not work as a body text.”

“Yes, you can’t predict when it will do it next, keeps you on your toes.”

 What TV show/Adverts could you see this working for?

“A technology program or a program related to digital aspects like the gadget show.”

“E4 / Music videos / MTV”

“Shows like Phonejacker, Glitchy, Big Brother ect.”

Evaluation

I have thoroughly enjoyed this project. I haven’t really made any proper typefaces before this and it was a really good stepping stone for type design in general. The outcomes for this project seem to have worked really well and I’m very happy with the way they turned out. I got to learn a new skill that I’ve always wanted to use which has now opened doors for me both inside of university with briefs and outside too. While talking to a tutor about my work at the end of the group critique, he said he was said he was very impressed with how the outcomes looked and suggested trying these with a projector to get a cool look on other ways that they could work rather than TV. Thanks to this project it’s given me more respect to type design and would like to work with it again in the future.