Simplified Henna - Update

Screaming. So incredibly happy that I have gotten this dang typeface to work now.

So it seemed that the problems I had been facing previously were a combination of too many points, stray vetor lines throughout my characters, incomplete vector punch-outs, and small areas in my outlines that were not connected and I had not noticed.

Looking back, this all makes me feel really dumb that I've been having all these problems and didn't seem to notice half of them as I went along, but when you stare at a computer screen for many hours throughout the day, especially on the same pieces, you tend to have these instances happen.

Thankfully, having fresh eyes on the project helped me to see what I didn't, and encouraged me to look harder to find some of the problems myself.

Anatomy & Simplified Henna Typeface - Update

So I'm sincerely bummed, because over the last week I realized I was not going to be able to do my Anatomy typeface as the one I concentrated on for class. It is... entirely too detailed. I got very overzealous with the idea of a really analytic, illustrative type like this and instead of making something doable, I made something that is not able to be accomplished with the amount of time being given. Were the rest of the class dedicated to doing just this, then I would definitely have the time necessary to bring this really kick-ass idea for type to life, but I realistically couldn't do it. Not with the typeface needing to be presented to Nancy today.

So, in a bit of a mad-dash I pulled out my Simplified Henna sketched and began vectoring all of those for today. I'm kind of sleep deprived, but sometimes that's the type of thing you need to do in order to meet deadlines or whatever. I'm excited to see what they look like in this program we're using to make out typeface.

Anyway, here are some images of the vectored characters:

I'm not entirely fond of (woah, should have probably cropped that last image, my bad) how the numbers came out, but that's ok. I can just not... utilize them. Fix them later. Whatever floats my boat, you know? But yeah. I think the lowercase and uppercase letters even themselves out well. So I can't wait to see them in action and hopefully all goes well?

Found Lettering In Lancaster

So, as part of our homework the one week we had to go through Lancaster and the surrounding areas to find examples of hand-lettering. I forget exactly how many we needed at the moment, but I have a nice handful of them.

Rebecca told me they needed to be displayed here on our blog, along with the locations of where we found them at.

Found this outside of our classroom.

While it was probably a hasty job with stencils, it still looks nice to me with all the bleeding bits, so I went with it.

Hand drawn lettering for a sign outside of Rachel's Creperie on Queen Street in downtown Lancaster. I like the personality in the lettering, I also like the idea of spicy nutella hot cocoa.

Also found on Queen Street (in fact I think almost all of these were). It was carved lettering in wood for the woodworkers guild, I believe. None of the lettering is done by machine, it's all hand carved. It was really neat to see all of the different surfacing within the actual wood.

Also on Queen Street. The signage that graces the barricades of where Zap & Co. once sat before the fire sometime last year or the year before it. I like the bubble lettering being offset by the thin ampersand.

More Queen Street. This is right outside The Candy Factory. As you can tell, I was walking down the length of Queen Street taking all of these. Lancaster's best lettering is practically in a 5 by 5 block radius.

This was not found on the streets of Lancaster. This is on a wine bottle in my home. I find that wine and other liquor/liqueur bottles tend to have the most interesting typography and most beautiful labeling for commercial products.

Also not found on the streets of Lancaster. Another wine bottle (which I hope to crack open soon). You can't see the intricacies of the lettering very well from this photo, and I should have gotten a close up of it, but I liked the typewriter feel of the lettering, as well as the "A Series of Unfortunate Events" typeface sort of thing going on.

Simplified Henna Typeface - Sketches

These are the sketches for my Simpified Henna typeface, minus the numbers 0 - 9 (I'm still working on what those should look like).

Keeping the idea of simplicity and henna in mind, I tried to create forms that weren't entirely too elaborate but were still decorative and would look nice on their own. Sticking to certain parameters, I made sure to use only a limited type of design decorations to encompass the actual typeface. So above you see closed "leaves", small opened "leaves" and large open "leaves" with seems. You also see dots, which are stepped in size from large to small, and a specific "flower" shape used.

Making sure that the elements between the uppercase and lowercase were distinguishable from one another, I may sure the uppercase was the more elaborate of the characters, and the lowercase were to be the most simplistic ones. There are very few decorate leafs or curls on the lowercase and none of them utilize the dots, that was strictly meant for the uppercase characters (and numbering) only.

I also tried my best to make even the number of characters that started with open shapes at the top versus closed shapes at the top for the uppercase, but decided that being lax with those restrictions on the lowercase would better benefit their development since they're already so simplified in comparison to their uppercase counterparts.

Anatomy Typface - Sketches

I couple of examples from the sketched version of my typeface. Or is it hand lettering? I think it's a typeface since we're vectoring it and putting it in that program. I have no clue anymore, my head is everywhere.

Anyway. I used another typeface as a base for my current one so I could match up the different organs to the letters to see what worked with what. It's an odd way of doing it, but it gets it done. Otherwise I'd be sitting there assigning body-parts particular letters that may not fully work.

After going over my options, I've concluded that I probably won't have enough individual body-parts or organs to do the entire alphabet (that or they just don't match the letter form in any way, shape or form), so I'll be substituting any of those odd letter forms that don't match up with bones and ligaments. I almost decided to go with things like fingers and arms and whatnot, but I want what is literally under the skin or counts as a whole as an organ (IE the penis, since it is a sexual organ, but it sits outside the body unlike the vagina).

I also got an idea of what to do with it as you can see. I was inspired by this lettering here:

Found on tumblr here.

I really liked that hand-drawn aspect to it and heaviness on the one side and it seems to be working with the lettering overall that I've done. It also gives it this old-school medical feel to it when there were no pictures, so doctors hand drew or had someone hand draw out diagrams of body parts and whatnot.

Going off that I decided that my idea for motion graphic with my typeface in it was going to be something LA Noire inspired. So think like the 1920's gangster or crime films, with their grainy sepia-toned surfaces and the really hyped up sequences. Much like the whole "Black Dalia" thing. Crooked cops, slashed ladies, that sort of feel.

I haven't completely pegged down the overall concept, but my guess is a story explaining the death of something. Whether it's serious (like talking about heart disease) or not serious (a really dramatic motion graphic about ED), it's gonna have this really overdramatized presentation. I should look for some grainy film reel movies awhile so I can use them throughout the motion graphic.

Typefaces - Chosen w/ inspirations

WARNING: Some images in this post are graphic and may be considered disturbing or upsetting to those viewing them. If you're not good with blood, or exposed human entrails than please do not click on the links following.

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My first decided typeface is the one dealing with human anatomy, and not just regular "this is an arm, this is a leg, look a nose!"  human anatomy either. I'm utilizing all major organs, and entrails in order to create this typeface and I'm hoping to bring forth a level of detail that is more sophisticated than cartoon-y like my first examples were following:

I'm going to give them more dimension and depth if I can. I kind of want to go sort of macabre with this. Hopefully that is allowable?

Inspirations: Human Heart, Human Intestinal Tract (Large & Small), Human Lungs, Human Brain, Digestive System (Stomach / Pancreas), Human Liver,   

Journal Entry No. 4

For our 4th journal entry we were to read an article on understanding the difference between Typography and Lettering, found here.

It was an interesting read, although it was rather long and I suffer from a shortened attention span of late. The article went into an explanation as to the difference between Typography and Lettering, Lettering being drawn elements of type (whether by hand, in a computer program, etc.) not traditionally developed for the use in actual printing. So basically it's like when you made the word "Mom" all pretty and curly and whatnot on your Mother's Day cards as a child because you thought it looked pretty and hoped she would too (although my mom didn't care either way). Whereas with Typography, it deals moreso with the aspects of how a typeface interacts together and how to arrange it with the idea of making legible print or online type for the purposes of reading.

The history lesson was interesting, although some of it I knew before. I honestly wish I could have seen more examples of Illuminated manuscripts. I follow a couple history blogs on Tumblr and a couple of artists who still do illuminated manuscripts, and I have to say those things are absolutely beautiful. Doing something like that requires so much patience and skill, I don't know if I could possibly possess any of that.

I did hear about the illuminated manuscript of the bible that was recently completed, though. I was pretty sure they had it on the Today show a couple of months ago, and I was just constantly amazed by what all they did with the materials and how beautiful it looked.

Anyway, the second part of the journal entry was to find hand-lettering we find inspiring from the links in the blog and upload them onto here and talk about what we liked about them, so here we go:

NOTE: Funnily enough, some of these blogs are actually run through tumblr, so guess what I'll be following?

• I found these absolutely beautiful. The idea of sitting there and basically imprinting onto the paper to give it dimension with that slight pop of color is just astounding. I'm very much a sucker for decoratively curled ascenders and descenders, so seeing lettering like this is really alluring to me. I think what I like best from this example is the fact that the negative space is what I pay attention to most. It's like those raised forms are what are creating the letter-forms instead of the imprint and ink.
• I'm also very fond of this one here. I like the idea of taking old-styled lettering and updating them with some flourishes. Once again I'm also heavily drawn to the negative spacing in the letters, and the raised and imprinted surfaces of the paper. I can't say much in terms of things like ascenders or descenders as the examples don't have much in terms of that, and since they're not side by side I can't comment on things like x-heights or whatnot either, but they are extremely visually appealing to me. I'd probably use them on something like invitations to parties or as the lettering into leather-bound diaries.
• I like Simon Walker's piece for Gold Top Cider on his portfolio page here. I always felt like condensed fonts commanded so much more attention than just giving something a bold element , and the slight shadowing to the characters with the different colored shadows emphasizes them well to me. My only issue with condensed typefaces is the fact that they're so much harder to adjust and use when you're creating things around them. You almost have to restrict yourself to smaller spaces so they feel effective.
• I'm also fond of this font here, by Claire Coullon. I noticed throughout most of her typeface examples that she has elements within them that connect them in certain places, almost like it's a signature to her. But I thought this particular typeface was effective with the connection of the elements in the characters with bowls and such. The connections seem almost flawless between the two, like someone who is doing calligraphy but without that unnecessary sharp edge to it.

I ended up bookmarking the article, because I find the links relevant and I like looking at other people's work to inspire me. It was a good read, and I found a new blog to follow on Tumblr, so I'm happy.