DIY Alphabet

For this task we were asked to created our own typeface. We had full freedom to go with this wherever we wanted. The brief said we could do whatever we want as long as we produce a full alphabet and punctuation.

Before I started this task I had looked at inspiration for this task. I had started by reading Ellen Luptons 'Thinking with Type' to help me get an even better understanding of typography, but I mainly focused on the lettering aspect of it. Then I had started jotting down some rough Ideas of potential things I could do.

I started doing some simple design ideas, this one I had thought about rubbing out parts of each character to create gaps in each letter making each one unique and different, when I began experimenting with this idea on paper I wasn't liking how it was looking so I had taken it onto illustrator to develop it further on there.

I had used Helvetica Light as the typeface before cutting out random sections of the typeface so that it was still legible but had the cutout block effect I was trying to create. I think this worked well and gives it a modern, futuristic look.

For this idea I wanted to make a typeface out of circles. I had drawn out some rough ideas on paper before quickly moving onto illustrator to make them vectors. Here I then played around with the layering of different circles to create the desired shapes I want. I like how this turned out as its more symbolic but still manages to just about convey letter forms.

Below I had done the characters A - D in this style.

This next design is similar to the first one where I deleted random sections of text. I was thinking how much of the text I could remove before the text became unreadable. I had played around with halving the typeface Helvetic Neue to create there half letters.

I had done this on illustrator to delete the paths to the text so I can manipulate the text easier. Like the first typeface, this one also has a futuristic modern look to it.

For this typeface I wanted to create it out of pencils, since I was using them to design my previous typefaces, why not actually use the pencil itself to create one. I had gathered a ton of pencils and Laid them out on a white piece of paper then made them resemble characters, I had then snapped one in half to get a smaller piece to help me create some of the characters.

Here I had done some experimenting with material objects. I had created some letters using String, Matches, Blutack and scissors.

This typeface I wanted to approach it in a messy unique way. I used glue and poured it onto some black paper in the outline of a typeface to allow it to drip and get messy on the paper but still making sure its legible.

I had done the characters A, B, C and an exclamation point. I tried to get some little strands of glue coming off the type to make it look messy and unique.

Here I had played around to create a drip typeface, I wanted to create a digital version similar to the glue typeface which I had created about.

This was one of the first ideas I had. Thought about making up letters out of that same letter, which can be seen to the right in the image. I like this idea because it will allow it to be messy and imperfect which I quite like.

Following some rough experimentation on paper I moved into photoshop to create it digitally. I had used Helvetica Neue Bold as the templet, then filled it with smaller sized letters till it was full, then removed the templet. I then chose to stop developing this ideas as I didn't see it as strong as my other ideas.

My next ideas was to create a really rough, sharp, scribbled font. I had taken some inspiration from Jean-Michel Basquiat. More specially his Neo-expressionism work which features child like scribbles overlapped with different colours and unique looks.

I had done this using an ink pen and just loosely scribbling the letters at a sharp angle, trying to avoid using curves to make the lettering look sharp and dangerous. Then I realised this looks almost demonic, so after being frightened for a second, I came up with an idea to follow this theme and flip the 'T' in my typeface to give it the appearance of and upside down cross, I did this because it makes my typeface even more unique and different.

Then I played around with colour and went over the letter 4 times in a different colour each time. I really liked this style so I had done it some more to see what colours looked good together, the amount of colours per letter and how much colour to use.

This idea was a hard one for me to execute. I had the ideas of making type out of clouds. But I didn't just want to do the normal shitty bubble writing to look like clouds. So I had done very little experimenting on paper and moved straight onto my laptop to carry out my idea. I wanted to create my type out of real clouds, so I took some Pictures of the clouds and added loads of adjustment layers too one of the clouds until I had the perfect cloud.

Then to create the letters I had got the online of the letters from the typeface Helvetica Neue Bold, and just layered the cloud over it, and duplicated it multiple times and played with the opacity till I was happy with how it looked.

Further Development

Here I have chosen some of the typefaces that I really like and developed them in more detail.

The first typeface I decided to develop further was the scribble typeface, more specifically the version in which I used multiple colours and layered them ontop of each other.

I had done both upper and lowercase letters as well as different styles because I couldn't decide between the rounded letters or the straight letters.

Below I had put my image into illustrator and used the image trace and pen tool to create a digital version of this typeface, I had experimented with different colours and trace modes to create a black and white version, then 2 coloured version with varied detail.

I really like how this typeface looks in black and white as it looks really inky and raw with a gritty texture too it.

Following this I then put them onto photoshop and played around with creating a different look for the style of the letters. I had used the capital B to do these experiments.

Here I have chosen to develop the circle typeface. I want to use the same sized circles and not distort them in any way, as I feel like it looks cleaner this way.

Uppercase

Lowercase

Below : Here I have done some experimenting with different styles I could use, I chose the letter 'H' and played around with how I could design it.

Left : Here I had tried a more curvy look to the typeface style with the characters 'E, F, G' in an uppercase font.

I like how this turned out as it looks legible and can easily make out what the letters are.

Left : This was some exterminating I had done but I had used the circle shapes to make other shapes that more resemble the characters, this allowed me to use straighter lines to create the characters.

At the end I had also done another lowercase 'i' design going back to the circular style.

Below : Here I had gone back to the more curvy style and developed this typeface a little more with letters through A too J.

Here I had done some development and experimentation for the cloud typeface. I had done some more capital letters as well as some lowercase and tried to scale them correctly.

Below I had also experimented with creating some punctuation and numbers in this style.

Final Typeface - Crescent

For my final typeface I chose to use the circular / crescent typeface I was experimenting with, and I decided to simply name it 'Crescent' as the typeface is made up of crescent and small circular shapes.

Below is my final typeface, Letters A-Z, with 0-9 and ". , ! ?"