Alphabet Soup partner TYPEFACE OUGD403 What i did

My first idea:-

When i first chose the type i was going to do i was also contemplating another typeface so it would look although the whole type was a wire but i didn't wanted it to represent music more and the feel for digital letters.I really did love this idea but i felt like i maybe would be able to explain enough the reason behind just a wire. Where as theres a lot of aspects to the font i actually chose.

The type i chose:-

The type i chose for my font is called 'square display' by vicar kumar i found it on a website called dafont.com. I found this type appropriate to re-create as i thought it looked very digital like anaglog. The main theme behind my typeface is music and i wanted to incorporate that as much as possible. After our mini crit with Amber and Simon i knew i also wanted to make the typeface lowercase as it would be easier for the wire to link to each letter.

When i was asking Jake stuff about personal interests for this alphabet soup project he told me how he was interested in architecture i think this font resembles architecture with the skinny design its also quite geometric and its aesthetically pleasing.

Experimentation and Development / How i did it :-

I next printed out a few letters of the alphabet on a4 and then two full types on a4 and i drew on them to try and find the best idea. I always knew from the beginning i wanted to create i really music based type and i thought doing a microphone or headphone wire running through the letters would work.

Record disc:-

I wanted to make the letter o to a record disc I didn't want to have every letter with a hole in like that as it would look to much. so I just stuck with the letter O.

I created a large black circle holding down shift at the same time as dragging the mouse so it would be the same circumference all the way round. i then repeated this making a smaller circle but a white one and i placed it in the center. i then made a smaller circle with a black stroke and put that directly in the center to create a record disk.

Glyphs:-

The type i found off the dafont.com didn't actually have any glyphs created so i had to create them my self using the line tool. I used the square tool to create the '&' sign. I wanted to make all the glyphs as similar as possible to the type so i played about with the stroke tool to make sure they were the same width.

Microphone:-

Creating the microphone was easy i used geometric shapes to put it together i used a isosceles triangle a large circle for the head of the microphone i put a white outline around the circle so you could see the top of it over the black cone shape. Lastly i used the rounded rectangle tool for the rubber parts on the bottom of the microphone this was to make it a little easier for me to join the microphone wire up to. I had originally thought of doing head phones instead of the microphone but i found the quality of it out of the shapes i had made looked poor compared to the microphone.

I removed the 'o' from the type and added in the record disc i had created. Then added the glyphs in. I next started by adding in a squiggly line from letter to letter. Although i found this to be easy at first it became quite teedias as i had to be careful i was repeating the same pattern or it wouldn't look like a crazy microphone wire.

Once i had got to this stage i was really pleased , i then started adding the wire to the glyphs it was harder than adding it to letters as some of the glyphs weren't very big. After i added them i dragged on the microphone i created to the right hand side. I found it quite difficult to match the wire up to the ends of the letters as i couldn't really get the width to match so that was somthing i had to be careful with when i was tracing it.

Final product with trace:-

To trace this type we had to present it on a1 tracing paper. I got the document printed out on a1 card and i used white tack to hold down the tracing paper. I went over the outline of every thing on the type , the letters the shapes and the wire line. It took a long time to go over it in pencil. 

When i finished the pencil i was going just going to go over the letters in black fine liner but found it would look a lot better if i coloured it in with black ink. It was very tedious after a while but I am pleased with the outcome. I think i found it the hardest colouring in the actual record shape that i used to replace the letter 'o'.

The badge:-


For the badge i kept it monochrome as i felt it would look better than in colour. I decided to go with the idea of the record disc and put Jakes name inside of it. It was quite difficult trying to bend a name round the shape of the circle.

I used the fish eye tool to make the letters of Jakes name bend round the record disc i selected the preview tool so i could see how much it was bending before selecting okay. I then used re-did the wire from each letter to letter and added on the microphone.

 I printed the badge on to some card a few different sizes to see what it could turn out like and then stuck it to a badge. Although i didn't stick to the guidelines for the badge i am pleased with how it turned out, and i think the type definitely works best in black and white.