October 2015 – Page 5 – Jamie Hammond

October 12, 2015Jamie Hammond

Mateusz Witezak: My Style

Mateusz Witezak does his typography in the hand-drawn style, using precision to make the typography flow. I have had a go at this in the style, using a black fine-liner to create these type faces. I know that they haven’t turned out the best, and some of the lines aren’t the straightest- yet I still feel that this experiment was successful. I learnt a lot from this process, learning that drawing a grid makes the composition a whole lot easier as all of the letters will then be all of the same size. Also, this makes the whole process a lot more accurate and easier to draw out. I sticked to the monochrome style, just as Witezak, which I feel has made the type a lot better in this instance because I simplifies the design. I will continue to experiment in this way because I love the aesthetic of it and hopefully with the things that I have learnt they will be more successful outcomes.

October 12, 2015Jamie Hammond

Mateusz Witezak: Calligraphy and Hand-drawn type

Mateusz Witezak is an artist and typographer who hand draws all of his type faces in a calligraphy style. The aspect that I find interesting about his style is the composition and layout. I’m inspired by the way the different styles of typography blend into each other and how the patterns bring them all together around them. I think that this style would go well on a book cover in the style of some of the others that I have researched, as it is eye catching and it would be suitable for the crime thriller/dystopian genres.

Again, continuing from the other styles that I have researched, I really love how the monochrome colour scheme looks on this style of type and it makes it more gripping and olden. Yet, when I see designs like this it reminds me of contemporary styles because of the composition and precision that it has been constructed with. For one of my six letter designs I am going to try this style by using pens and fine-liners, using freehand type and the grid method that we learnt in the workshop to achieve many outcomes.

October 10, 2015Jamie Hammond

Type: A Starting Point

As a starting point for my typography I decided to delve into the hand drawn element. I had looked into some of the typefaces beforehand before drawing out these ideas, specifically researching the serifs and sans-serifs and how to draw them using the grid method that we used in our workshop.

To draw these I marked out a size of 3cm for the height and 2cm for the width, meaning that hopefully all of them would end up a similar size and would look more professional in order to turn them into vectors in the future. I began by only drawing the outlines of lowercase ones, where I learnt how time-consuming the process was and how to accurately draw letters correctly. I then went on to draw the letters in capitals in the same style to allow me to develop them into vectors on Glyphs in the coming weeks.

The style that I wanted to achieve was a sans-serif contemporary font that incorporated aspects of boldness and subtlety. The outlines bring an element of simpleness, yet by having the diagonal lines in some of the individual letters I feel that they stand out off of the page and would work well on packaging and advertising campaign. The typography would also be suitable for modern and contemporary designs, as well as for practical situations because of the readability and boldness when it jumps off the page.

I will develop this further by filling them all in to juxtapose the differences with just the outlines, as well as developing them into vectors in order to use them as a real font. I think I will also experiment with all of my styles and letters that I create in a David Carson style way and in other different styles so that I can research into what is most suitable for the genre and product.

October 9, 2015Jamie Hammond

Hand-drawn: The Grid Method

In the workshop today I learnt how to draw typography by using the grid method. This involved creating boxes/lines to distribute the letters so that they would follow a systematic outline and look precise.

To begin with we all did the letters H N O Y as these covered all elements of most letters and we figured out which ones were more difficult more than the others. The grid allowed me to draw them accurately and get most of the elements the right size. I found the O the hardest to do as this didn’t follow the lines of the grid, but instead just had to stay inside of the lines. Also, because it went thinner at both the bottom and the top inside, and grew thicker on the curves it made the process harder. I am happy with the outcome of these, and I have gone on to experiment with my own lettering using the grid method. I followed all of the steps which were on the tutorial along with using my own design to make these. I like the curves which I added to both the J and the I because it changes the appearance of the overall work. The curvature on the M changes the aesthetic too, and I’m happy with how these have turned out. I will continue using the grid method as I liked how these have turned out and I would like to develop them further.