Assignment 4
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Greek
1. Premise of Idea After learning to appreciate the history, form and visual quality of typefaces in the past three projects, I came to realise that we have been focusing a lot on Latin alphabets. However, many languages out there uses non-Latin scripts and alphabets as can be seen on the left. These are equally as interesting and beautiful as Latin ones. Some scripts may still look like Latin alphabets such as the Cyrillic or Greek script. Others, like the East Asian languages are angular and calligraphic in nature while scripts derived from the ancient Sanskrit language have swooping elegant curves.
Simlish from The Sims
Daedric Rune from The Elder Scrolls
Heptapod Language from Arrival
I was therefore interested in the creation of a new alphabet system. The concept itself is interesting as it recalls the Type as Image project, but this time the 'images' produced are made into 'text' again as we are using them as alphabets. There have been quite a few precedence of this type of project and some that I am aware of were done for video games. Take for example Simlish, a completely gibberish alphabet featured in the Sims video game franchise. Another example is the four sets of different alphabets, each mapped to the 26 Latin alphabets, created for The Elder Scrolls franchise: Daedric, Dragon, Falmer and Dwemer alphabets. Designers for the alien language in the 2016 movie Arrival took the idea a step further and created an alphabet system that does not look like a code or disparate symbols. Essentially, their goal was to create a language system that was not based on any existing human language.
A sample of some of the fictional alphabets created for video game franchises and movies
From all these references, I decided to go with the idea of creating a code. A gibberish alphabet system lacks a clear stucture I can follow, while trying to develop a completely novel system like in Arrival might be too ambitious for the time frame of this project.
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The following are some ideas I have brainstormed in trying to find a workable method in creating the new set of alphabets.
2.1 Uppercase & Lowercase Serifs
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2. Initial Ideas
At first, I had no clear methodology to follow and my approach was purely a visual one. I took elements of both the uppercase and lowercase versions of each alphabet to create novel shapes. The typeface I based these upon is Times New Roman as I find it an interesting challenge to try and create something unfamiliar from something as ordinary as Times New Roman. Playing with the weight of the character, or simplifying the outlines created slightly different looks that are also quite interesting.
A problem I had with these characters is how un-writable they turn out to be, and also how convoluted they end up looking, especially when stringed together. Serifs also present a challenge for this kind of manipulation with its thick and thin strokes. I am still not very sure how I feel about its visual effect at this point.
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2.2 Sans Serif With the perceived challenge of serif typefaces, I switched to try and create the forms with sans serif typeface. The typeface I chose was Futura because of it's clean geometric forms On the right are the three ways I explored of putting together the sans serif characters to form a new form. From the class feedback, the forms derived from the serif typeface seem more unique and sophisticated compared to the sans serif ones. As such, I continued exploring how more coherent forms can be derived from Times New Roman.
2.2.1 All Caps
2.2.2 Upper and Lowercase 2.2.3 Subtraction
Trying to only use elements from the upper case characters created symbols with clean precise lines.
The upper and lowercase letters, when combined, creates a combination of triangles and circles.
There's a slight symmetry as The results are highly a direct result of stacking the geometric shapes/symbols. upper case character to create new forms.
Minusing off lowercase letter shapes from the area of the uppercase letters created shapes that are less geometric and more 'tribal.'
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2.3 Handwritten Characters and Phonetics I decided that I should not immediately jump to creating forms in a digital form because languages do originate from handwritings. To skip the handwriting process, I felt, would create unnatural and impractical characters later on. As a result, I went to scribble lines and shapes that are practical for writing. At the same time, as can be seen on the lower left image, I explored the possibility of creating new characters that are not based off the 26 Latin alphabets but on the phonetic symbols (symbols denoting a specific sound or way of pronunciation). The phonetic symbols for the English language consists of 12 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds, meaning that I would need to create a total of 36 different alphabets. Eventually, this idea does not go through not only because of its sheer number of characters. but also because of how problematic it will be if it were to serve as a code for English language. The words 'too,' 'to,' and 'two,' for example would be written in exactly the same way with a phonetics-based alphabet, possibly causing unnecessary confusions. The idea of the handwritten however sounds viable and these handwritings were then recreated using the elements of any suitable letter from the chosen typeface, a.k.a Times New Roman. The result can be seen in the images on the left, showing symbols with clearer and simpler designs. This approach however lacks methodology as forms were just randomly generated and there are no rules set to tie all the characters together.
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3.1 Final Methodology I really liked the method of digitising a handwritten character/form and so I try to find a restriction that could give more structure to this method. After a bit of brainstorming, I came up with the idea of writing the original 26 Latin alphabets, but with eye closed and using a non-dominant hand. The result on the right is mixture of scribbles that displays a high degree of distortion, to the point that they do not look like the original characters. To hopefully even add more diversity to the form, I also asked friends to help do the same; the image at the top of this page is one example. From those scribbles, I picked and recreated the more interesting forms for each character and in the next page, you can see the chosen forms.
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3.2 'Shortlisted' Forms Some letters like P and X surprisingly lent itself to so many alternative shapes while letters like L and V does not change that much due to their simple shape.
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——————————— type as image: creating new alphabets ———————————————————————— 3.2 Making the Characters With the preparatory work done, all there's left to do is to actually start building each new character. Certain characters received even further refinement of ideas here; either to make their forms look more pleasing or in some cases to make them look less like their original letterform. The letters like U and V were purposely made to look more similar to each other in the digital version. This is an attempt to emulate how certain pairs Latin alphabets can be visually so similar to each other. Examples include E and F, M and W or O and Q.
Below is the collection of drafts and alternatives that did not make the final cut.
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5 Application After creating the alphabets, the next step is to create an application for it. Some ideas that got thrown around included:
Uppercase letter sharing the same baseline:
a. A rediscovered ancient civilisation document. b. An alien's field journal; an alien's record of what humans look like to them. c. A poster promoting the alphabet set as a new typeface. The three ideas eventually culminated into the final idea: A rediscovered ancient document that is being exhibited by the museum; complete with a "guide book" (that is essentially a swatch book) and a promotional poster to visit the exhibition.
Uppercase letter centralised on the baseline:
5.1 Creating an Ancient Document The first step of creating the 'ancient' document, which will serve as the main museum specimen, is to create a reasonable length of text. Shown on the left is one unique consideration taken for the type because for these new characters, the uppercase letters look better when centralised along the baseline instead of being on it. After every letter was set in place, I printed out the document and started distressing it by crushing, crumpling, folding and other physical treatments. The sepia tint and specks of moss was achieved by dousing the paper with coffee and rubbing a piece of leaf onto the paper respectively. The result is shown on the right.
v
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——————————— type as image: creating new alphabets ———————————————————————— 5.2 Creating the Swatch Book While the main purpose of the swatch book is for people to be able to clearly see the detail of each character, the book is styled into a museum guide to play into the lore of the ancient language. Each character shown in the book is portrayed as a 'reconstruction' of the character seen on the worn-out document. The top left image was the original proposed layout for the pages inside the book. From the feedback session, it was decided that the white stripes are too distracting and too many things are going on in the page. As a result, the layout was revised to the version shown on the bottom left image. The distracting white stripes were removed, replaced by a simple thin border around the character and the text "Figure x." was removed to below each character. Overall, it's a more ordered composition which serve well to fully draw attention to the characters. I decided to give the characters the fictional name of 'Warmont-Nièmes'; an anagram of 'Times New Roman', which was the typeface these characters were derived from.
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The poster was relatively simple as it has been suggested to just pick a few favourites among the 26 characters and enlarge them for the poster. In the end I chose 3 of the 26 characters to be printed out as posters, shown on the images here. The posters on the right were other alphabets we tried to make into a poster but did not turn up as pleasing as the final three letters.
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5.2 Creating the Poster