Category: Student work

Subtle variation in typeface

Task 1

For the first task of filling in missing part in the word ‘aden’, I was able to learn that individual letter have difference structure and characteristic. For example, different features include stroke contrast, x height and many other aspects varies to specialise a typeface. While sketching the word ‘aden’ in serif font, I have messed up with the aperture and serif in lowercase ‘a’, which I thought it would be better if I emphasis in the negative spaces by the next task.

Task 2

In the second task , we were told to write random letters ‘abcdufrtg’ in given font . It is more challenging to me, as I was using a brush pen rather than a calligraphy, which affect the stability in strokes. It is also important to further determine in each letter’s spacing as well as characteristic in structure and shape.

Reflection

By reflecting my sketching in letters, I can improve by paying attention in contrasting stroke, and accurate proportion to the serif. While sketching out and guessing the type shape, Gerry suggested us to recall how we write letters while we was a child. As designs may mimicking natural handwriting within typeface, such as the letter ‘u’ with serif in the ending. In these tasks, I realised that it is a complicated and long process to design a typeface. It was an useful practice for me to understand what typography elements a typeface designer need to determine and reserach while designing a typeface.

Recreating typeforms

Task 1

In this task I had to complete the missing half of 4 letterforms — all of the same typeface. I made several mistakes that made the features of the letterforms inconsistent: the apertures on the ‘e’ and ‘a’ do not match in size. The gaps between the bowls and stems of the ‘d’ and ‘a’, and the gaps between the shoulder and stem of the ‘n’ do not match either. From the weight of the existing parts of the letters I came to the conclusion that the typeface has little contrast between thicks and thins. After seeing the actual typeface I realised that I should have added some more contrast where the shoulder and stem of the ‘n’ connect as this can be seen where the bowl of the ‘d’ joins its stem.

The secondary font left a lot more room for mistakes as seriffed typefaces are a lot more diverse in style. It’s hard to make out some specific elements of a typeface with little information given, for example: there’s no way to tell that the ‘a’ should have a terminal. An error that I shouldn’t have made was making the serif on the ‘n’ too small. The serif on the ‘d’ should have made this obvious.

Task 2

The secondary task presented six full letters to use as references. Seeing the whole letterforms made it a lot easier to predict the characteristics of the typeface. However, having to draw entirely new letters from scratch presented a new challenge of its own. The letters I drew came out looking too square, to avoid this I should have focused on the shape of the letterform as a whole rather than focusing too much on drawing the parts of the letter bit by bit. An important thing that I learnt from this task was that the serifs on the ascenders on b’s and d’s always face left (I made the mistake of making the serif on the ‘d’ face right which looks odd, especially compared to the b). In my opinion having serifs that both face the same direction helps the flow of reading.

AK Design Studio

Brief

This project with Sophia White from the Brand Design Agency will help you look at design trends and understand how a mood board can be used to help you develop and design with this in mind. You will develop ideas for Logotype Trends for 2022-23 working with a specific theme in mind. This project will help you to look at trends and design logotypes for a specific theme. Using the selected theme, create a logo for yourself as a designer that you may use to promote your work/own design studio.

Process

The first step I took to approaching this project was selecting a theme from this article that Sophia sent us in advance that lists 10 upcoming interior design trends for 2022. After looking through the different trends, I found that I was most drawn to the ‘Organic Materials’ theme. This is because I liked how it was very simple yet combining different elements still creates a clear contrast. Whilst looking at pictures associated with my chosen aesthetic, it reminded me of Japanese minimalist interior design so I decided to base my logo ideas around the elements of it. To get a better idea of the elements I wanted to use, I made a mood board of pictures so that I could start creating some sketches of possible logo ideas.

I isolated some prominent features of Japanese minimalist interior design and found the following:

  • Organic shapes contrasting with geometric
  • Block colours
  • Simple lines
  • Nature
  • Clean cut aesthetic

I began by sketching the different elements I found so that I could see them all in front of me and start thinking about how I could combine them into a logo that represents me while adhering to the theme. While considering the theme of the logo, I also had to decided how I would represent myself – either with my own name or a different one. In the end I decided to just use my own name – more specifically my initials ‘AK’ – as it is much more direct and clear; to showcase that the logo is for our own design company, I chose the name ‘AK Design Studio’, with my initials being the main focus. Because I decided to use my initials, I thought to use my signature, which makes the logo much more personal, as well as making it look more refined and clean. As for the inclusion of the theme, I quite liked my initial element sketches around the subheading ‘nature’, so my logo was steered in that direction.

Now that the main base of my logo was decided, I had to begin to try and incorporate the elements of the theme into it. To start this process, I sketched out my initials and drew circles and ovals around it. This is because my signature can create either a general square or rectangle shape, so by drawing a circle/oval around it creates the contrast similar to what I identified in my primary research. In order to add ‘nature’ into the logo, I replaced different sections of the ellipses with a branch of leaves, making them look like wreaths.

  After doing some more sketches experimenting with different placements, I saw that none of the ones I produced seemed to fit the result I was looking for. I then realised that I could venture into the concept of ‘nature’ a bit further, and use imagery such as moons and stars instead, as it still fit in with my original objective. Like before, I started sketching new ideas with these new images. Rather than trying to make the additional illustrative elements a main part of the logo, I decided to accentuate the initials by making the entrance and exit (which serves as the diagonal of the K) strokes longer; by elongating these strokes, it created a gap which I was able to fit the words ‘design studio’ into, hence making the title portion of the logo complete. Concerning the illustrative elements, I noticed the space underneath the ‘AK’ looked quite open, whereas the top half already had the point of the ‘A’ which was balanced out by the valleys either side of it. Because this open space made the logo look unbalanced, I decided to add a four-pointed star underneath. I made this decision as the other images I tried to add into that space didn’t work for the balance overall.

To make the final refined logo, I took a picture of the sketch and imported it into Procreate; this is because the way the letters are written is quite unique, and I couldn’t find a fold that was similar enough to manipulate to recreate them. I used a thin technical brush to trace the ‘AK’ so that I could get a tapered effect that calligraphic typefaces don’t have. After doing this, I took the finished trace into Illustrator and did Object > Image trace > Make & Expand, which recreated my drawing as a vector that I could then manipulate. I then added in the words ‘Design Studio’ using Baskerville, I chose this font as a serif font looks much more cohesive with script/calligraphic lettering. Once this was complete, I created the star by making an oval, the going to Effect > Distort & Transform > Pucker & Bloat, then puckered the oval to bring in the sides apart from the vertical and horizontal points, thus creating a four-pointed star. After this, I positioned all of the elements of my logo together and readjusted them accordingly, to ensure that the balance was correct.

As this was a logo project, I thought that the most appropriate way to present it would be a brand board. In order to complete it, I made two simple submarks that still incorporated my initials and decorative elements. I also showed the fonts I would use in my brand, and displayed a simple colour palette.

Reflection

Overall, I really liked this project, as it allowed us to get an insight from a designer in the industry and showed us part of a professional’s process, which I thought was really interesting. Furthermore, I liked how much freedom the brief gave us, and there weren’t a long list of rules that we had to follow; the only ‘restriction’ being our chosen theme, which we still had freedom to pick. This project let us be creative in a way that was fun but also very useful to show us a real world application of our work, and how a typical project in the industry might proceed. As well as this, because we were able to create branding for ourselves, a lot of us may use these as either a starting point or how they are to develop an identity as a freelancer if we so wish.

 

brand board pdf

Letterforms

Being given half the typeface, I had to draw the other halves of the letters to what I expected them to look like, taking into consideration, the curves, thickness and the sizes of the ascender and descender as well as the overhang of certain letters for the word to be visually aligned.

Copying letterforms

On the second task, being given certain letters of a particular typeface, I then designed other letters in the style of this such as a, c, b, d, u and f, following the form of the existing letters and how they curve varying in thicknesses and size. I have also learnt how letters work to be visually aligned, with the use of over hangs and ascenders, however the letters could be shaped slightly better, to provide a more accurate reflection, especially the serifs on the upper side of the U, I have learnt how they only form on one side, rather than across the stroke.

RFT flyer for a Swiss Professor

I have created a film flyer for Reading Film Theatres Autumn 2017 programme designing for a visiting professor working in Reading who is originally from Switzerland. To design accordingly with this user in mind, I have organised the order of type in a way of importance to the audience, with the title and age rating first alongside the closed captions/subtitles or audio description symbols as well as the country of where the film is based to give the user a much clearer understanding of which film would be suitable for them. Below this, I have used the date, time and location lastly followed by the cast and director which I think is of least relevance to this user.

Circus Poster

In Emma’s collections session, the circus advertisement really caught my eye, as the shape was odd in comparison to modern posters however the style of writing and colours remain quite similar. It’s interesting to see the development of posters from what they used to be to now and the hierarchy of importance for each aspect, however in this poster, there is quite a large proportion of empty space, which could have included the dates and times as it does not appear to. e there. The images are simple illustrations demonstrating the age of the work, and the lack of technology that was created at the time. The amount of typefaces used however show how they could be new designs so want to show it off. Overall, I like how unique this poster is in comparison to regular shaped ones and how the colours compliment each other well, however it is quite misleading to the eye as everything is of similar size so is difficult to understand which is the most important.

Family Friendly

The aim for this mini project was to create two different flyer designs for the Reading Film Theatre.

To begin I sketched out some rough layout plans focusing on the different ways I could present the information given. I chose the layout that I thought displayed the information in a hierarchy where the most important information was displayed either in a larger font size of a different colour. In my two designs I had to make sure that I was considering the target audience these were

  • A father with two children under 10
  • A retired doctor and her husband, both of whom have a passion for old Hollywood
  • A visiting professor working in Reading, but originally from  Switzerland

Before I started my design I made sure that

This was my first design. I chose to use red and black and white as these were the colours used In the Reading Film Theatres logo, also I found that these three colours are commonly  associated with theatres/cinemas.

We were told to use two columns, so I decided to have one column for October listings and one for November listings. and in my second design I had one column for ‘family friendly’ listings and one for over 12s.  I used black lines to separate columns of information. However, in a feedback session I had one of my peers suggested to me to remove the black lines and she thought it was a bit too much and actually looked more overcrowded and messy.

 

FF Tisa Pro

For this exercise I recieved a few letters and had to guess what the other letetrs would look like. I enjoyed this task as the task before helped me determine what features each typeface has.

I was able to see the features and what type of serifs or sans-serifs I needed. This task allowed me to make judgements and measure up accordingly to then draw out my own letters using the FF Tisa Pro typeface.

 

Funeral invitation

I was so intrigued by all the collections, however this funeral invitation caught my eye as it is something I have never seen before.

I was drawn to how thin and delicate it looked and how old it must’ve been for the reaosn that now we hardly see invitations like this and this big. The way it is, I believe it must’ve been for a well known rich special family possibly upper class.

To the left side, the black thing, I analysed it and I believe it is a wax seal as when the plastic was taken off the invitation I looked closely at it and I could see some designs and patterns on the wax seal, which again could represent wealthiness as maybe only rich upper class people could afford wax seals.