Assignment 4: Show me

Context
Typographers and type foundries (the companies that commission and produce typefaces) have always had to promote their latest designs to printers and designers to show off a particular typeface, its different fonts in a variety of sizes and contexts, and the unique features of it. Once Specimen Sheets were the main way of doing this. Nowadays most of that marketing takes place online – research type foundries on the internet.

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.

Requirements
Do a mock up of the magazine cover to show where and how your title font will appear along with other cover elements.
Produce a magazine article that is attractive and interesting enough for someone to want to pick it up to read, and which shows off what that you have learnt so far about typography. Add illustrations, photographs and colours as you want.

Analysing the brief

Key words:

• Design a font
• Type
• Cover page
• Article
• Attractive

WH Questions:

• Who is the target audience? Whoever is interested in typography.
• How to publish it? Printer
• How to make the magazine stands out? It needs some research.
• What font should I choose? It needs some research.
• What is the colour palette? It needs some research.

Primary research

• Research about typeface design

Secondary research

• Typography magazines

Primary research: Typeface design

Pinterest board

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Secondary research: Typography magazines

Pinterest board

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By looking at these examples, what I think that help them to be attractive are:

• Quirkiness
• Bold colours
• layout
• Grids

The name of the magazine is not necessarily important. They all have some different elements which distinguishes them from others.

Mind mapping

Since calligraphy is one of my interests, I have decided to go for a calligraphy typeface for my font design.

I knew through my research that there are quite a lot of script fonts. For my design I would like to make fonts fancier with more decorative elements.

Design process

Initial magazine layout sketch

I used Procreat on my iPad pro to sketch my letters. I can understand that for each letter I probably need to make couple of versions to help the combinations of letters work together.

Then I took letters “T, Y, P, E” to Illustrator and used pen tool to trace the letters. Shape builder tool and width tool were used as well.

For the background, I have made a pattern on Procreat.

Then I took it to the photoshop and added some colour and used multiply blending mode.

To design the magazine, I created an A4 document in Indesign. The margins were set to 15 mm for the top, bottom and outside and 18 mm for inside. The bleed were set to 3 mm. The number of columns 4 and gutter 4.2 mm. The font that used is Roboto Bold, Regular and Italic. 12 pt for the body text and larger size for the headings and subheadings.

The image for the inside of the magazine is from Pexels.com.

Blending mode and transparency were used for the effects.

*Text from: https://creativepro.com/what-makes-a-good-typeface/

Final design

Self reflection

This part was an opportunity for me to research and learn more about typography and font design. I think that I have a better understanding about typefaces, their structures and the mood that they represent in each content after this part. I believe I still need to learn more about typefaces and fonts.

Designing a font was a challenge, however, I was enjoying the whole process. My font choice was a decorative font and I really like the overall outcome, which I think it reflects my style. But I need a professional eye to criticise my work. So I am looking forward to hearing my tutor’s feedback.

References

• Carter, R. Day, B. Masa, S. Megastar, Ph. Sanders, M. (2015) Typographic Design: Form and Communication
• Creative PRO: What Makes A Good Typeface? At: https://creativepro.com/what-makes-a-good-typeface/ (Accessed 27/08/2020)
• Pexels: Typography Photos. At: https://www.pexels.com/search/typography/ (Accessed 27/08/2020)
• Pinterest: typeface design. At: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/search/pins/?rs=typed&q=typeface%20design (Accessed 27/08/2020)
• YouTube: Typeface Design & Font Making Process w/Mark Davis At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSe_BeNk5cA (Accessed 27/08/2020)