OUGD403 - Alphabet Soup: Typeface

OUGD403 - Alphabet Soup: Typeface

So after having a good chat with Andy and learning a lot about him I went and had a bite to eat and ponder on what to do.

I really like Andy, speaking to him was very comfortable, he seemed a bit nervous and shy to begin with and slowly came out of his shell telling me all about his life and what he loved to spend his time on. He has a very classy appearance, not scruffy like myself and not too over the top but just enough to fit into the smart casual grouping. He was very friendly and after introductions he slowly came out more and more, overall a really nice guy!

I wanted my typeface to represent him as a person, not a particular hobby or all his interests or anything like that. I had already done that with mine.

What I wanted to do with this brief was to delve into the effects of his personality and try and communicate that through type.

To do this, firstly I noted down some characteristics I needed to portray in my typeface in my sketchbook whilst eating my tasty sausage sandwich.

• ·      Neat – To represent attitude, body language and organisation.
• ·      Simple – He’s not insane/crazy/bizarre. He’s pretty down to earth and simple.
• ·      Pressured flicks – A sense of style but also some edge on the letters to represent his punctuality/appearance.
• ·      Lower case – Capital letters wont be necessary, I haven’t gone partying with him yet so I am so far unaware of him getting too outgoing at parties or nights out. But then it also shows how calm/quiet/shy he is.
• ·      Joints – If the letterforms are placed together as a word or sentence (or maybe even a jumbled mess) I’d like the letters to connect to also show how neat he is.
• ·      Drips – He mentioned to me that his workstation is always quite messy with papers everywhere and stuff, the drips on the typeface will help show this to the viewer subtly. 

Next up was to research different typefaces to see if they sparked up any inspiration at all!

The first font I found which I took an interest in was Mutter Krause, This font was built for the reconstruction of the 1929 silent movie "Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück", where it was used for subtitles, that were missing. The font is redrawn from the original inter-titles.

After researching the movie I found it was actually a very political story from Germany in the 1920s, and as far as I know.. Andy isn’t political at all but the typeface would represent him well.

Even though the aim of the type was for a political silent movie, I feel a different vibe to it.

When I look at these letterforms I see a classy, casual and sincere group of lettering which bend to the right making them seem smoother and more laid back as a typeface.

The next font I saw which caught my attention to being similar to the imagined font was Baskerville Italic, a standard issued font on most computing systems.

I feel a very laidback but intelligent ambience to it and feel like it would represent andy as a person well.

Finally I found a more handwritten approach of a typeface. In my head I was imagining a combination between a well-constructed formal font to take part in structure but also a hand written/illustrated form of lettering to exaggerate the artistic abilities of Andy whilst also representing his personality. This font here, Reklame Script takes part in the plan I had to join everything together when it was typed out. But also adds character to it, Andy isn’t a boring guy, he’s creative artistically as well as musically and I want to show that through the letterforms.­­­­­­­