Work in progress – Page 23

October 13, 2015Jamie Hammond

Development on my Hand-drawn type

As shown in an earlier post I started the typography process by hand drawing all 26 letters of the alphabet using the grid method we were shown in the workshop. I did both the lowercase and uppercase for these so that I could develop them into vectors. But here I have filled in the letters which I feel has drastically changed the style of them as they are bolder and seem like a more modern sans-serif style.

I have taken inspiration from worldwide sans-serif fonts, such as Helvetica and Arial, but I have put my own small twist on them. For most of the stems I have ended them in a diagonal slant as this gives an edge to the letters and I think that it makes them more eye-catching. With the lowercase set there are a lot of round, circular letters so I couldn’t add as much of a style to them- and only with individual letters when I did. Yet, with the uppercase set I felt that I could experiment more with them and add more specific elements that made them stand out. My personal favourite is the letter M. This is because I accidentally made the letter smaller than the others with I was drawing it out. But I like the way this appears against the other letters and it seems to be bolder than the rest.

The next stage of development for this set of letters is to create them into vectors and hopefully turn them into a real, working font.

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.