Assignment Four: Show me (Part one - development)

Brief:

Design the font for use on the cover of a magazine called type and write a short article for the magazine using a range of typefaces, with typographic illustrations, drawing on all that you have learned in this section. The article should include sections on:

What makes a typeface interesting
How a typeface is constructed
Question marks

Mindmap show research for a typographic design assignment

Show Me mindmap

I began with my usual process of creating a mind map. A brainstorm of all the things that came to mind as I was thinking about the assignment. This raised a number of points:

The physicality of the production of type and how much of the history remains in the terminology we use
Its variety and the fact that typefaces are constantly evolving and morphing
A formalised anatomy and underlying rules for how best to work with type
How typography has been integrated into different artistic movements
Its role in conveying messages and therefore having a notion of ‘audience’

Three ideas emerged in terms of where I might take the design:

A minimalist approach
A Pop art/collage style
An approach based on the materiality of type and its origins

I had also been sketching, just playing with different approaches and layouts. I think it’s fair to say I’m not the most accomplished at hand drawn type but it helped me evolve the designs I would focus on.

: Type experiments

: Type cover 1

: Type cover 2

: Type cover 3

: Type cover 4

: Type cover 5

: Type cover 6

: Type cover 7

: Type cover 8

I used a couple of online tools to try and help develop a typeface. One was based on my handwriting, which I deliberately exaggerated:

Handwritten typeface

This was fun to develop but I don’t think it was ever going to be a serious option for my designs. I tried FontArk but found it difficult to use and it kept crashing.

I also went back to some of my earlier research, and examples in my visual diaries around Pop Art and minimalism. I continued collecting for my Pinterest boards and following feedback from my tutor for Assignment 3 I have started using my ‘Swipe File’ board as a more eclectic collection place, just pinning things that catch my eye rather than being organised into a particular theme.

I found a number of online resources like ‘Thinking with Type,’ that were really useful in terms of understanding type construction and design ideas. Alongside this I watched YouTube tutorials and did a lot of reading around the subject. I found ‘The Typographic Workbook’ particularly helpful.

I was starting to formulate my design ideas but realised I needed the text for the articles so I knew what I was working with in terms of content. I may not have followed the brief precisely but I decided to go with the aspects of typography that interested me. The first was around how typographic design needs to focus on both the micro and macro levels. This is important in relation to how we read and the fact that we don’t read letter by letter but scan and pause allowing time to process the visual information when we pause.

In terms of construction I suspect that was supposed to be about ascenders, decsenders, ligatures etc., but I was fascinated by the more fundamental construction. Western capital letters are based on five archetypal structures that apparently have remained unchanged for nearly 2000 yrs. This was intriguing and I could see how it might be incorporated into a design.