Project 1: Creating a Typeface

When starting typography 2 I was very excited. I very much enjoy type and the relationship between characters. Typography and a science and when executed correctly can be made into very interesting graphics. Type is everywhere and basically the foundation of any good design. When starting out project one to create our own typeface I was very excited. I have always wanted to create one and loved finding new type either skimming through typekit or on dafont. Just looking at the ideas and processes people have went through to create these beautiful pieces of type was something I always wanted to try. I thought it was very interesting also that it was going to be a "low res" font. The immediate feeling I had was 80's style arcade machine, and that gave me initial ideas for my own type. I wanted to create a Display font that stood out when being used as a header, but also had a very humanist feeling to it. Trying to capture would be hard since the font is made our of mechanical squares, but I liked the challenge in it. I looked at various other pixelated fonts like dig dug, galaga, and etc. When first starting the font I worked on basic letters such as "n", and "m" and etc. It was hard at first to think of a new form of these letters. I wanted to create the letters but not to follow any of the references I looked at. After many trials and errors I was finally able to create a nice looking N. I was also able to keep that humanist feeling by giving the letters low curves. It became a hybrid letterform almost resembling italic characters, however these were going to be my normal letters. I kept going with this flow, and I was able to create most of the letters finished. I was having much trouble with the letters S, Z, and X. Getting the curves for the S was hard since it was in a tight area. Z and X were also hard because they are more lines than curves which was hard to keep with my style. I skipped these letters and started to work on my italics which were the real challenge. Since my font already looked like italics, making them more italic like was going to be a struggle. First I tried to distort the original type to give them a slight slant. I thought if I did this I could try to recreate the slant with the pixels. However, I quickly noticed that this was not going to work and had to think of other ways to give the type a italic style. After more trials and errors I thought of a couple of ways. First I changed the A letterform. For the italic I made the A a one story A, while the normal one was a 2 story A. Next I made the letters tighter. Any letter such as N and M I closed the legs in to make them more narrow to get that feeling of italics. Finally I gave some of the letterforms a tail. The letters L, and I have small tails. Once I converted most of the letters, I was finally able to get the three letters I was having much trouble on. I kept these the same because I felt they worked with both styles.