TYPOGRAPHY AND HYPERTEXTUALITY - PROJECT 2
1 November 2017 - 15 November 2017 (Week 9 - Week 11)
Gan Pei Jane (0327622)
Typography & Hypertextuality
Font Design
Lecture/Tutorial 9:
1st November 2017 (Week 9)
There is no lecture for this week. We are working on Project 2.
In Week 9, we are required to digitize our fonts into Adobe Illustrator. One of the requirements is to set the X-height of our letters at a minimum of 500pts. Then, we were to continue to transfer all the letters into FontLab Studio. A very important thing to take note is to not have our letters in strokes but filled. If it is in strokes, all we had to was: Object>Path>Outline Stroke to fill the letters.
Lecture/Tutorial 10:
8th November 2017 (Week 10)
In Week 10, we learn about Kerning, Leading and Spacing. Here are some notes that we needed to take note of:
Kerning - The adjustment of space between letters.
Letter Space - The amount of space between a group of letters.
Tracking - The adjustment of space between multiple letters.
Leading - To make sure the distance from the bottom of the words above to the top of the words below has appropriate spacing to make them legible.
We also learned how to make our fonts look better by adhering to these rules:
1. We should keep letter spacing to 5.
2. Even spacing is important for reading.
3. Counter forming, which is the space outside the letter, must look good.
4.We must use the center sparingly, and not on the entire text.
5. 35 to 65 character ideas is a thumb rule.
6. We should enlarge our work to 400% to see clear sense.
After we transferred our letters to FontLab Studio, we are required to adjust the kerning and letter spacing of our fonts.
Lecture/Tutorial 11:
15th November 2017 (Week 11)
There is no lecture for this week.
Mr. Vinod also briefs us on Project 3 this week, which is our poster design. He asked us to do our visual research regarding the poster and also to do several sketches on the poster design. After completion of research and sketching, he then asked us to digitize our posters.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Instructions:
Feedback:
Week 9
Mr. Vinod advises me to choose a font that is suitable and nothing too fancy as a reference for a font that I am going to create. Based on my sketches, which Mr. Vinod thinks that were too fanciful, Mr. Vinod advises me to use Bauer Bodoni font as reference because there are some similarity to the font that I have sketched. He wanted me to find references from a well designed font so that I can learn about the basis of typography, instead of creating a font that I came up with.
Week 10
Mr. Vinod advised that I should strictly follow and examine the font that I was referencing to as my fonts still do not look very much like the font that I was referencing to and I should adjust the thick and thin lines to make sure that my fonts look similar to the Bauer Bodoni font. He also commented that my lowercase "f" looks good and I should make my lowercase "j" look similar to the lowercase "f".
Week 11
As I was lost with the font design after Week 10, I decided to ask Mr. Shamsul for more guidance. Mr. Shamsul says that my number, "4", should make the bottom line thicker, and my "6" and "9" should have more thicker width in the left and right curves of the number. He also mentions that my "m" should have a smoother line.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Reflection:
1. Experience
The font design project is more difficult than I have expected it to be. Although I had fun creating the alphabets on Adobe Illustrator, it is also a very confusing project for me as I have no idea what I would end up with when it turns into a font. For me, the font design project is one of the most difficult projects I have encountered thus far.
My Illustrator skills were also lacking, which makes this font even more difficult to create due to the curvy characteristics of the font. But after that, Mr. Jeff was in class to guide me on how to use Adobe Illustrator to create the font. I have used the Ellipse Tool, Square Tool, Pen Tool and also the Live Paint Bucket Tool to create this font.
After importing the designed alphabets into FontLab Studio, I find it interesting to adjust the kernings and metrics of my font to see how it would look like in texts and sentences.
2. Observation
While making the fonts on Illustrator, I find that I get better at using the tools in Illustrator and also visualizing how I wanted my work to look like. Mr. Vinod is very strict in observing our work and he would point out every error that I would make in my work, which leads me into being better at my observation skills than I would originally be.
3. Findings
The placement of alphabets into FontLab Studio, kernings and metrics plays a big role in how our font would look like after it is created, even a 1pt difference will make the end result of the font look different so we should be careful when experimenting with the kerns and metrics values when making our font.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Book of the Week
Week 9 - Week 11
Gan Pei Jane (0327622)
Typography & Hypertextuality
Font Design
Lecture/Tutorial 9:
1st November 2017 (Week 9)
There is no lecture for this week. We are working on Project 2.
In Week 9, we are required to digitize our fonts into Adobe Illustrator. One of the requirements is to set the X-height of our letters at a minimum of 500pts. Then, we were to continue to transfer all the letters into FontLab Studio. A very important thing to take note is to not have our letters in strokes but filled. If it is in strokes, all we had to was: Object>Path>Outline Stroke to fill the letters.
Lecture/Tutorial 10:
8th November 2017 (Week 10)
In Week 10, we learn about Kerning, Leading and Spacing. Here are some notes that we needed to take note of:
Kerning - The adjustment of space between letters.
Letter Space - The amount of space between a group of letters.
Tracking - The adjustment of space between multiple letters.
Leading - To make sure the distance from the bottom of the words above to the top of the words below has appropriate spacing to make them legible.
Fig. 1: Example on Kerning, Leading and Tracking.
We also learned how to make our fonts look better by adhering to these rules:
1. We should keep letter spacing to 5.
2. Even spacing is important for reading.
3. Counter forming, which is the space outside the letter, must look good.
4.We must use the center sparingly, and not on the entire text.
5. 35 to 65 character ideas is a thumb rule.
6. We should enlarge our work to 400% to see clear sense.
After we transferred our letters to FontLab Studio, we are required to adjust the kerning and letter spacing of our fonts.
Lecture/Tutorial 11:
15th November 2017 (Week 11)
There is no lecture for this week.
Mr. Vinod also briefs us on Project 3 this week, which is our poster design. He asked us to do our visual research regarding the poster and also to do several sketches on the poster design. After completion of research and sketching, he then asked us to digitize our posters.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Instructions:
_________________________________________________________________________________
Project:
Project 2 (Week 9) - Font Design
Requirements:
1. Sketches
2. Name, Student ID and Date to be labelled neatly and correctly.
The first step to designing your own typeface is to have a reference so you can observe the characteristics of the typeface and design your own typeface based on the typeface you have chosen. For this assignment, I have picked the Bauer Bodoni font with the guidance of Mr. Vinod. Next, we have to sketch our font onto a piece of A4 sized paper and then digitize the font into Adobe Illustrator.
_________________________________________________________________________________The first step to designing your own typeface is to have a reference so you can observe the characteristics of the typeface and design your own typeface based on the typeface you have chosen. For this assignment, I have picked the Bauer Bodoni font with the guidance of Mr. Vinod. Next, we have to sketch our font onto a piece of A4 sized paper and then digitize the font into Adobe Illustrator.
Fig. 2: An example of Bauer Bodoni Typeface.
Fig. 3: Sketches of font design.
Fig. 4: Overview of digitized font.
Fig. 5: Generated font from FontLab.
Fig. 6: Finalized font in Adobe Illustrator.
Feedback:
Week 9
Mr. Vinod advises me to choose a font that is suitable and nothing too fancy as a reference for a font that I am going to create. Based on my sketches, which Mr. Vinod thinks that were too fanciful, Mr. Vinod advises me to use Bauer Bodoni font as reference because there are some similarity to the font that I have sketched. He wanted me to find references from a well designed font so that I can learn about the basis of typography, instead of creating a font that I came up with.
Week 10
Mr. Vinod advised that I should strictly follow and examine the font that I was referencing to as my fonts still do not look very much like the font that I was referencing to and I should adjust the thick and thin lines to make sure that my fonts look similar to the Bauer Bodoni font. He also commented that my lowercase "f" looks good and I should make my lowercase "j" look similar to the lowercase "f".
Week 11
As I was lost with the font design after Week 10, I decided to ask Mr. Shamsul for more guidance. Mr. Shamsul says that my number, "4", should make the bottom line thicker, and my "6" and "9" should have more thicker width in the left and right curves of the number. He also mentions that my "m" should have a smoother line.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Reflection:
1. Experience
The font design project is more difficult than I have expected it to be. Although I had fun creating the alphabets on Adobe Illustrator, it is also a very confusing project for me as I have no idea what I would end up with when it turns into a font. For me, the font design project is one of the most difficult projects I have encountered thus far.
My Illustrator skills were also lacking, which makes this font even more difficult to create due to the curvy characteristics of the font. But after that, Mr. Jeff was in class to guide me on how to use Adobe Illustrator to create the font. I have used the Ellipse Tool, Square Tool, Pen Tool and also the Live Paint Bucket Tool to create this font.
After importing the designed alphabets into FontLab Studio, I find it interesting to adjust the kernings and metrics of my font to see how it would look like in texts and sentences.
2. Observation
While making the fonts on Illustrator, I find that I get better at using the tools in Illustrator and also visualizing how I wanted my work to look like. Mr. Vinod is very strict in observing our work and he would point out every error that I would make in my work, which leads me into being better at my observation skills than I would originally be.
3. Findings
The placement of alphabets into FontLab Studio, kernings and metrics plays a big role in how our font would look like after it is created, even a 1pt difference will make the end result of the font look different so we should be careful when experimenting with the kerns and metrics values when making our font.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Book of the Week
Week 9 - Week 11
Fig. 7: Indie Fonts front cover.
Fig. 8: Indie Fonts back cover.
I referred to a book called Indie Fonts by Rockport Publishers this few weeks as I wanted to expand my visual research and grasp some ideas on the various types of fonts made by independent designers as opposed to the classic design fonts. This book is interesting as I can see what type of fonts can a designer make using various elements and shapes.
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