DesignContext: OUGD403 - Alphabet Soup - Typeface

Brief

Design a typeface for a full alphabet and glyphs (a to z, !, ?, @. £. :, .) that represents the personality/ character of your partner. You will discover their personality/ character through a series of set questions.

Using your newfound appreciation of the anatomy of typographic forms and the wealth of research that you have already gathered, focus on the manipulation of existing in order to solve this problem.

Background/ Considerations

EXPERIMENT with a range of possible line qualities, marks, colour and paper types. How will you colour help with the communication? What paper stocks can you work with? Do you need to draw, photocopy, photograph, collage, trace or combine all these processes?

Your final resolutions should read as convincing, well crafted and clearly presented typographic forms.

Mandatory Requirements

The typeface that you create must be based upon an exsisting typeface that you will manipulate, produce in only black ink. Type must be laid out in given format:

A B C D

E F G H

I J K L

M N O P

Q R S T

U V W X

Y Z ? !

, . @ "

Each resolved letterform should be supported by a broad range of visual investigation in the form of design sheets and notebooks.

Deliverables

A1 poster (tracing paper)
Name badge for your partner (45mm x 90mm)

Progress Crit : 12th October 2012

Studio Deadline : 19th October 2012

Module Deadline : 23rd November 2012

My Partner : TRISTEN CURRIE

I asked Tristen a series of questions to get to know him better;

What is your favourite colour?

"don't really have one but if i had to pick i'd say.. green"

What is your earliest memory?

"probably falling out of bed when i was younger. I just remember waking up on the floor a few times"

Which living designer/ type of design do you most admire, and why?

"anything minimalistic and modern, i like design to be clean and set straight. I also like street art, particularly Banksy, because it's got intelligent meanings behind it"

What would your super power be?

"teleportation, so I could travel a lot. I love to travel, I'd hate to live in the same place for my whole life"

Which piece of graphic design do you wish you had created?

"nothing specific..."

Who would play you in a film of your life?

"Johnny Depp or Humphrey Bogart, they're both speak really classy which i like"

Who would you invite to your dream dinner party?

"Natalie Portman, Jimi Hendrix, Frankie Boyle"

We then decided to create spider diagrams of each other, to get more of an idea as to which direction to steer our designs towards. I mostly focused on his art interests, to get more visual ideas:

Examples of Jelle Martens work, one of Tristen's favoured designers:

The traits of Jelle Martens work is the diagonal, parallel lines with overlapping colours and sepia tones. The upward angles could somehow be incorporated into my letterforms?

And Sarah Morris :

The simple, segmented blocks of colour are the most prominent thing about Sarah Morris' work. The colours and composition is almost at random and disjointed. Can this be somehow incorporated into my work?

London Underground Map:

Again, the block colours and geometric, diagonal lines are big features in the London tube map design.

Helvetica:

Helvetica is a simple gothic typeface that is associated with clean cut design and lots of white space. Arguably, it works best in black and block colour (IE, filled in). This type of font would coodinate well with the other types of designs that Tristen has suggested, but is completely different in appearance. How am I going to combine the two styles?

Marius Roosendaal: