Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Context
XL Recordings are reaching their 25th Year Anniversary this year and are looking for a way to celebrate their long established history and success. They have given us a number of events which they class as significant and are looking for creatives to bring them to life and ‘Illustrate Label History’.
Brief
Illustrate a significant event, or series of events, from the history of XL Recordings. Celebrate the artist and highlight their seminal moment(s) in a way that engages and communicates to your audience.
Target Audience / Tone of Voice
The brief states the target audience, is unsurprisingly music lovers, of all ages. It also states the brief should not be determined by an audience. If it successfuly illustrates label events, the correct audience will naurally be interested and drawn towards the work.
Deliverables
Full Scale Viral Campaign including;
We are aiming to create a tone of voice that is bold, unique, humorous in order to achieve what we need to.
- A Viral Video (1 Minute Long) - A Print Campaign - Advertisements across Web Platforms - A Supporting ‘Interactive Campaign’ Video (1 Minute Long)
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Reference
Handwriting Styles
Before reaching our finalised concept and justification for the project we were initially curious about individuals handwriting and their own personality. We were interested how we perceive someones handwriting to be a reflection of the persons character, do we make this connection in our head or is there a scientific process in this? The highlighted analysis is of Barack Obama’s handwriting. We looked into handwriting deeply, and the similarities between handwriting and typefaces.
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Graphology
Graphology Examples:
Small x-height – A thinker, an academic, quiet, meticulous, restrained
Graphology is the pseudoscientific study of handwriting, it gave us a much stronger justification in researching handwriting and it’s reflection of personality. it is a real study, that many believe in. We researched into the graphological conclusions analysts reach from visual handwriting cues. These conclusions were taken on board, and applied to typeface creation.
Right slant – Friendly, manipulative, Controlling, Responsive, Loving Rounded letters – Creative, Artistic, Independent
E.g. if someones personality is concluded as bold, and loud, a thick weight and uppercase typeface, with large ascenders would be an application.
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Contextual Research
Type Specimens
We researched into existing type speciments and the way in which they are designed to be interacted with. As we aim to capture the subjects personality, and tastes. Almost making a gift for them, the idea of a big of type material appealed to us. The above examples are from UK based type foundry Colophon.
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Font creation process
Typographic Grids
Grids are essential to creating type, everything needs to be a fraction of a mm perfect. Guides are important, we looked into existing typographic grids and how designers use them. Wim Crouwel, in particular is a great example (above). Wim designs a typeface for almost every poster, right onto the grid.
We watched documentaries and took notes about how to produce fonts, the effects they have and important notes on which letters to form a font around. Matthew Carter in Helvetica (2007) said the best letters to form a font around are ‘h’ ‘o’ and ‘p’ as you gain information about ascenders, descenders, curvatures and other rules that apply to almost all letters.
Some of our finished grid sheets were inspired by Wim Crouwel’s abstract typefaces.
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Logo Development
Typecast • Verb
We chose to call our project and typography service ‘Typecast’, it is the perfect name for a variety of reasons. The word can be split into two, ‘Type’ and ‘Cast’ which is exactly what we are doing. We are casting type, from a deep data collection, and graphological process.
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Final Secondary Logo
Final Primary Logo
The final typecast solution is the most stripped back, communicative and reductive. We purposefully chose the worlds most renowned and overused typeface Helvetica as a tongue-in-cheek reference to typgraphy.
The secondary logo is designed for web presence, and is perfectly suited to square format avatars and so on.
Using Helvetica, and it’s lack of ‘personality’ allows the fonts we produce to shine, which is the priority.
‘Typecast’ on it’s own also means, simply taking something at face value, which is what we would be doing by forming an assessment of an individual simply from their handwriting.
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Typecast Brand Guidelines
Typecast • Verb
We chose to call our project and typography service ‘Typecast’, it is the perfect name for a variety of reasons. The word can be split into two, ‘Type’ and ‘Cast’ which is exactly what we are doing. We are casting type, from a deep data collection, and graphological process. ‘Typecast’ on it’s own also means, simply taking something at face value, which is what we would be doing by forming an assessment of an individual simply from their handwriting.
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Reductive & Clinical
Data Collection – Primary Research
The data collection material was carefully designed to get the relevant information, in an easy to navigate, and professional manner. We asked questions about peoples personality and personal details relevant to the production of the typeface. As well as personal questions such as “favourite gig” and “favourite film”. This helped us create deliverables for the type specimens later on.
Data Collection – Grids
The second part of Data Collection was made up of a Grid where we asked them to write “A quick brown fox...” as well as the letters “h” “o” and “p”. Essential letters to base a typeface from. This is the most important part of the data that we analysed in order to create the eventual typefaces.
The overall identity aims to be reductive and clinical, with a clear one-colour palette of green. Green is a reassuring colour, associated with medicine. We would be gaining data from participants in a pretty controlled, and confidential manner and wanted our identity to carry this across. The overall effect is similar to Typecast prescribing the subject a font, and this was the feeling we wanted.
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Data Collection : Subject 0144
Subject: 000144
Here is the applicant I chose from collection from over 30 participants, each of whom gave us information about their personality, and tastes. Transfer paper allowed us to gain supplied information but overlaid on top of grids, allowing us to measure slants and curves.
Personality + Tastes = You
A typeface cast from a graphological process, contextualised in Stone Roses posters in a blue colour pallette would capture the individual I chose above.
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Overall Analysis
Graphological Conclusions
– Bold – Reserved – Ambitious – Precise – Creative – Logical – Independent – Determined – Freedom – Reliable – Driven – Balanced
– Very Rounded – Circular – 3 degrees strokes – The Stone Roses - Variable taste in colour – Mod – Manchester – Relaxed style – Wide letter spacing – No letter joins – Slanted ‘e’ - 1988 birth year – ‘he’ almost a ligature
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Development & Process
Typography grids
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
We created 10 typography grids from scratch before attained participant information, all grids are slightly different. Some are designed for long serif type, while some are designed for rounded sans-serif typefaces. We wanted the ability to produce a wide variety of typefaces and not be limited in our scope.
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
The grids were an invaluable tool when figuring out how the font works, the curvature and the angles. When you want to get ideas down quickly, letterforms are difficult to draw a decent interpretation of. The grids allowed us to quickly draw strong, and legible typefaces.
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Finished Typeface: Singular.
Singular
Singular means to be individual, balanced, nonconformist and unique. These keywords all align with the personals graphological analysis. Using Singular, an English rather than foreign word aligns with the participants nationality, and it also communicated varying cap widths, ascenders, descenders and varying letterforms.
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Key Characteristics
Grid005
The whole font has been virtually designed on our own designed grid - Grid 005. What we’ve christened the ‘Donut Grid’ because of it’s simple circular forms.
Smaller ascender, than descender. 55% of x-height, compared to descender being 75% of x-height. 14 degree cuts on letterforms, adhering to participants baseline slant.
A circle was the most logical option as the foundation of this font, as the graphology points towards being balanced and solid, the best balanced shape you can get is a circle, or a sphere. Impossible to topple over.
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Final Deliverables 01
Singular Pack
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
We produced individual type spec bags full of the typeface in content, every choice we made in terms of design, colour and subject for the type was informed by the tastes and personality of the individual themselves.
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Type Specimen
A full type specimen was produced, breaking down the concept, and all development and structure of the typeface, with fold out elements and fluro pink elements.
This produces a highly personal bag of material the subject will hopefully naturally enjoy, and appreciate, as every element down to the colour is what they simply like - according to our data collection.
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Final Deliverables 02
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Perspex Stencils
Typographic Forms
We produced a series of typographic posters, accentuating defining characteristics of the typeface, such as those seen above. We plan on applying this brief in a much more refined manner for our End of Year Show, and designing these is an indication of what we hope to achieve, but in an interactive manner.
Type stencils of the font, along with selected glypsh allows the user to create phrases and sentences with ease, and a layer of fun to a type specimen. Something we found from our research, often was lacking.
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Final Deliverables 02
Singular Type Family
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
Standard Bold Extra Bold Form
Personality & Taste
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
In order to really capture the individual in question, using their own typeface derived from their personality traits. We applied the typeface to contexts associated with their tastes. Above are examples of a designed The Stone Roses gig at Heaton Park, the subject attended and film dialogue set in Singular from the subjects favourite film - No Country For Old Men. Producing a pack with content like this for each client and participant creates much more of a personal quality to the deliverables.
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Application & Web Presence
To illustrate the website, we are showcasing the typeface created by Sam, Krowen. Focusing on Swiss style aesthetics and sharp angles, and short ascenders
Brief 02: Typecast. Collab w/ Sam Lane
Abbas Mushtaq:
Extended Practice Submission 22/05/14
Website & Layout
Type Generator
Built into the website is a ‘ Type Generator’ where users can physically interact with typographic elements with their finger on tablet, or cursor on computer.
The Typecast Website allows people to get involved with the experiment. The layout is shown on the left. As we are working with Type and Grids, the layout for the website closely resembles the layout used across print. This helps bridge the gap and keep the visuals consistent. The branding also runs across Social Media, to help keep the brand image consistent.
The concept is that the help users learn the structure and foundation of the typeface whilst also having fun trying to spell out different words, or even creating their own typeface.
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