Thankyou

So i have finished my alphabet and that means the last post on my blog....

Just letting you know that if this is your first time on my blog go all the way back to my first post and read it in reverse order to follow my progress. Sorry for the inconvenience but blogspot wont let me change the order without changing the dates of my posts...

Thanks for checking out my blog

Peace...

poster

Finished Poster

Specimen Selection Scan

Heavy Metal Scan

Heavy Metal

Naming my font

after seeing my font as a printed word i realised the style was more similar to a rock band style than to a medieval style.

thus i decided that i will name my font Heavy Metal

Hamburgefons

The word hamburgefons is commonly used to show the particularities of a font.

Lowercase

So this is what i came up with.....

had a bit of trouble with the e and a but looks alright otherwise.

alphabet

After hours upon hours of counting boxes and colouring them in i have finally finished my first attempt at designing an alphabet.

At the current point in time i have only finished my uppercase letters and am not looking forward to starting my lowercase letters. Drawing up my uppercase letters was difficult and time consuming although i am less worried about creating my lowercase alphabet as i have worked out a formula which has enabled me to speed up the process whilst keeping a consistent style throughout.

enjoy.....

Idea

SCHMALE GOTHIC

MANUSKRIPT GOTHIC

OLD LONDON

I have decided to give my alphabet a theme. This theme will be based on medieval font with sharp corners and a general hexagonal shape.

Diagonal Grids

When playing around with normal horizontal and vertical grids i found i was almost limited to a boring and basic squared letter shape. I also realised that to create a unique and original letter form i would have to do something a little out of the ordinary.

So i came up with the simple solution of turning my grids on a 45 degree angle and using them as diagonal grids.

Experimentation

playing around with shapes and form

first attempt

After making my grids i started sketching up a general letter formation. Once i got to 'f' i figured that i had enough to show my lecturer for him to get the general idea. the next day i took them into class and presented.

Apparently my first draft looked a lot like the work of Theo Van Doesburg.

P22 Destijl

The Dutch De Stijl movement (1917-1931) sought to create an art which took abstraction to its logical extreme, as exhibited in the paintings of Piet Mondrian. Inspired by the movement’s philosophy of pure form, P22’s De Stijl set features three rigid, balanced, and angular fonts and a set of geometric extras.

After realising that my lecturer was quite right about the similarities between the two i figured that it would not be an easy task designing a completely unique font.

i decided to start from scratch

Drawing up grids

After conducting some research i had a general idea of what i wanted my font to look like.

i knew that i wouldn't be able to just draw it up free hand so i used in design to draw up a series of grids.

Research

VARIOUS FONTS

FONTS I LIKE

Mabella

A Perfect Drawing

Where to Start?

Before starting at Billy Blue, i came from a street art and graffiti based background. So naturally when given the task to design my own alphabet my initial thoughts were that the assessment would be a walk in the park.

i started by roughly drawing up some freeform letters and it wasn't long before i realised there was a large difference between the art of graffiti and typography, in fact i realised that they were two completely different things and it was then i knew why our assessment clearly stated "NO GRAFFITI"

After understanding that this is not a graffiti task i pondered what would be an appropriate starting point...

I got onto the internet and started doing some research.

What?

For the people who view my blog (who are not my assessment markers or lecturers) your probably wondering what this blog is all about....

Over the next few weeks i will be creating my own unique alphabet and through this blog i will be documenting my process from start to finish.