Artist Typeface

Module TFD1064.

Design for Communication Design Graphic design group Project – “Artist typeface” Charlotte Clarke U1258610 U1258610@unimail.hud.ac.uk 07506594118

Artist Typeface

By Charlotte Clarke

“Type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters” Matthew Carter

Brief

“Font Bureau is a digital type studio and a leading foundry for typeface design. Over the past 22 years, Font Bureau has designed custom typefaces for almost every major American publication, and its retail library includes some of the most celebrated fonts on the market. Font Bureau intend to release a new series based on; art & design movements, designers and artists.

You are required to design a pictorial typeface to be included in their Font Bureau Art range.

The finished design will be reproduced in black and white but for promotion, Font Bureau have asked to see designs in full colour.

If accepted the designs will be used in a number of point sizes, to include 60pt,72pt and 84pt.

You will probably need to design on a larger scale than this but please bear in mind that the reduction to the given sizes will bring attendant problems of legibility.

You will also be required to design an advertisement for your new typeface which will be available as a downloadable pdf available from the site and a type specimin page to be included in the Font Bureau One - Line Type Specimens book.”

Cubism The cubist movement was started in the early 20th century and was pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. The movement was all about the technique of getting an image, object or landscape and taking it apart and putting it back together, considering different perspectives. This gives the pictures from the movement the warped and geometric outlook that they all display in similar ways. There are many different kinds of cubism, each displaying a different perspective on the movement.

A lot of the pictures are of a colourful nature, ranging in whether they use abstract colours (more recognizable in the works of Picasso) to the more classical colours used by other cubism artists. Although at first glance the pieces may look odd, warped and as if they make no sense, you take a deeper look into the picture and discover the different perspectives, different lighting and the various different thought processes the artist must have experienced when creating the piece.

Cubism can vary in terms of complexity.

From a few simple lines to a fully completed

and composed painting, all examples are an interpretation of an object or scene through that artist’s eyes. The main theme among each of the cubist pieces is the way they are each interpreting a multiple perspective idea on the subject. But another way of approaching the cubist way is taking things apart to put them back together again which can be seen as one of the most common ways in cubism of interpreting perspective.

As unusual as cubism can be, the adaptation of a cubist feel into a font shouldn’t be too hard especially with using the straight edges and the bold, strong lines throughout the work and placing them into the type. My initial ideas when looking at the overall cubist movement would be to try and adapt the shapes and the lines into block sans-serif typography. Another idea into adapting cubism into a font would be the techniques and the actual creating of the pieces into editing, morphing and creating an interesting font with a cubism feel. Cutting, changing and placing the letters back together is a technique that I feel will give a good cubist look but will need a lot of testing and experimenting in order to keep the typography legible as well as keeping the theme.

Pablo Picasso The cubist movement was started in the early 20th century and was pioneered by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. The movement was all about the technique of getting an image, object or landscape and taking it apart and putting it back together, considering different perspectives. This gives the pictures from the movement the warped and geometric outlook that they all display in similar ways. There are many different kinds of cubism, each displaying a different perspective on the movement.

A lot of the pictures are of a colourful nature, ranging in whether they use abstract colours (more recognizable in the works of Picasso) to the more classical colours used by other cubism artists. Although at first glance the pieces may look odd, warped and as if they make no sense, you take a deeper look into the picture and discover the different perspectives, different lighting and the various different thought processes the artist must have experienced when creating the piece.

Cubism can vary in terms of complexity.

From a few simple lines to a fully completed and composed painting, all examples are an interpretation of an object or scene through that artist’s eyes. The main theme among each of the cubist pieces is the way they are each interpreting a multiple perspective idea on the subject. But another way of approaching the

cubist way is taking things apart to put them back together again which can be seen as one of the most common ways in cubism of interpreting perspective.

As unusual as cubism can be, the adaptation of a cubist feel into a font shouldn’t be too hard especially with using the straight edges and the bold, strong lines throughout the work and placing them into the type. My initial ideas when looking at the overall cubist movement would be to try and adapt the shapes and the lines into block sans-serif typography. Another idea into adapting cubism into a font would be the techniques and the actual creating of the pieces into editing, morphing and creating an interesting font with a cubism feel. Cutting, changing and placing the letters back together is a technique that I feel will give a good cubist look but will need a lot of testing and experimenting in order to keep the typography legible as well as keeping the theme.

Juan Gris

Juan Gris was another influential name in the world of cubist art although his work wasn’t as well known and recognized as Picasso’s was. His work relied less on the use of bold lines but more on the use of shadows to create lines as well as clashing colours on a sharp edge against each other. Gris’ work looks a lot more warped and mis-matched compared to that of Picasso, almost as if he has cut parts of his work and moved them about to make the piece more interesting. This technique of cutting and pasting to make something more interesting is something that could be adapted into making a font and will be something to experiment with.

The colour use in all Gris’ pieces is interesting, similar to some of Picasso’s in the form of it being bright and clashing in certain areas and some being more muted and more conservative but in all pieces, the colour has been well thought out and put together effectively. If I were to make a colour font, I will have to consider how I choose my colours as well as where to place them in terms of complimentary and contrasting colours and what effect they will have on the overall font. If the colours are too bold and too bright they will distract from the core font and will make the font look too garish and so unattractive it wouldn’t serve any purpose if it were to be sold for public use.

Lines play an essential part in making a font, as without any use of lines, would not be a font at all.

It more depends on what will make the font legible as well as depicting a cubist’s style well. Cutting parts of the letters is a strong possibility in order to change a font into something that has been inspired by cubism, but I will have to be careful of where I put these cuts as it could affect the legibility of the font overall. Also, moving parts of the letters but not others is another problem for the kerning of the letters. Extra time on the letters shall be added in order to make the kerning perfect as well as making sure that all leading is also correct so that the font looks representable when put onto the page.

Overall, Gris is a good artist to use in the terms of adapting into a font, it’s just finding which parts of the artists work to take away from his work and rework into something I can use in the final font. I really love the feel and overall aesthetic of Gris’ work so expect his work to play a heavy influence in my final product if not inspiring it altogether.

Orphic Cubism

Orphic cubism is a form of cubism, stemming from the traditional form of cubism and creating a slightly different feel from the regular. This form of cubism incorporated a use of circles in the main shape index of the work and working them into the strong line and colour use in the work. I think this would work well when looking at making a font because no matter if the font is in capitals, or lower case, there will be a lot of curved letters and this gives good examples of how to incorporate them into the style. The colour use and the strong lines are all transferred from the traditional style of cubism and the circles are brought in to certain parts and give a whole new look to the pieces. Some of the circles look a little like a bulls eye where as some look completely unique in their styling and shape.

Robert DeLauney

Robert Delauney was one of the most famous artists to be put under the orphic cubism name. his unique style and bold colour use was enough to establish his art from any other and earn him fame in his uniquely composed pieces. He worked a lot with his wife who also enjoyed making these pieces along side her husband but Robert contributed most therefore earning his status under this art movement.

I admire Delauney’s work because it is so unique in the styling but yet can still be classed as cubism in its best form. The strong lines and the contrasting colours are all interesting and all inspiring to look at and bring all the pieces together really well in terms of consistency and quality. There are various things I can take from Delauney’s work such as his awareness when using bold colours together in the same piece as well as his unbeaten knowledge of composition and creativity. Adapting his work into a font is possibly so far one of the easiest cases I have come across in my research, as his style is minimalistic for a cubism artist. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have to be as aware about detail as I would with the other artists. I also have to be aware of leading and kerning as with making a text something less ordinary, it will be hard to get the font to look right as a whole.

Colour is less of a problem looking at Delauney’s work as it is all very consistent although it is all very bright. For my font I’d chose to tone down the saturation of the colour or even stick to black and white to keep the font simple and professional. I don’t want the font to look too complicated overall as this will affect the styling of the font, its effectiveness and the ability to tell who the inspiration was.

Cubist and Geometric shapes

These are some examples of Cubist and geometric patterns I could use as inspiration

Pop Art

Pop art was a movement that is still popular today with many well-known artists falling under this movement. The bright colours and the contrasting edges brought together with bold lines are all features that are used heavily in this movement and work well in creating a good overall outlook and personally I would feel that they would make a good font.

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein was one of the pioneers for the pop art movement. His work is easily recognizable by being made up of thousands of tiny dots as well as a bold and simple outline and bright colours. His work looks sort of like a scene from a comic strip, which is just one of the features, that makes his work so much more recognizable compared to any other from the pop art era. In fact it was so much like a comic strip, he used an actual section from a DC comic as inspiration for his ‘whaaam’ piece.

Although a lot of his work was created in the 1960’s, his work is still loved today and would make a great starting point for a font, especially as some of his pieces that have been inspired by comic strips already have a typography style on them. His signature dot style would have to appear in the font somewhere, as it would not be seen as a font inspired by him without them. This will open up the colour option, as it would be easier to display colour using the dots compared to using just the thin lines.

His work was created initially by using bold black lines to make an outline of either a character or object. This is something that will be used in a pop art font as the bold and black lines cannot be missed when making up the base of the font. Making the lines less harsh as well as informal when using such a bold and bleak colour will be the challenge as informal feelings of pictures are accented by how the object is drawn. With using Lichtenstein, I will have to make bold outlines of font which might make the font look more boring or formal than I had planned.

Unlike cubism, pop art doesn’t involve warping the text in unusual ways and therefore the font will look somewhat normal.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol is possibly the most famous name in pop art history. His works have been displayed in galleries up and down the country as well as being sold for hundreds of millions of pounds. His work is simplistic yet complex combining an interesting use of colour in all of his work from portraits to the infamous ‘Campbell’s soup can’.

Warhol’s work has influenced many designers across the globe and I chose to study his work because it is one of the classics as well as fitting in with the right art movement. His work has always been of interest and I find that I could easily adapt his work into mine if I looked and worked hard enough.

His work contains similarly broad lines similar to that of Lichtenstein but Warhol’s are complimented with pastel colours to bring the piece together. His awareness of the colour use combined with the overall composition and drawing means that he could create interesting and diverse pieces without actually having to do too much in terms of creating.

In order to create a font inspired by Warhol I may have to adapt some of his classical art techniques although I could still get the same effects using digital techniques. His simplistic use of colour will be easy to replicate but it is his interesting line use and printing feel that may be harder to copy. If I need to I will have to create the font by hand then scan the product in and adapt into a digital design.

Again with pop art it limits the amount I can actually do with the font but I can still play around with colour and minimalist techniques in order to get an interesting result overall.

Op Art

Op art is the optical illusion art that is fairly common today. The aim of the art is to trick your eye into seeing something it isn’t with the position of lines, colour, shape and texture. I personally enjoy this movement of art because it is both confusing yet amusing to look at, as you are never sure which bit is there and which bit is the trick. In order to make this into a font, you will need to have a lot of concentration to create the illusion without getting confused yourself as well as making it work in the eyes of everyone else. Another risk of this is the legibility of the letters could be lost within the illusion, but a well-constructed font should not lose any legibility.

Victor Vasarely Victor Vasarely’s work is fairly colourful for an optical artist, combining colours and shapes to create interesting and working illusions.

His work is possibly one of the most recognizable and one of the leading op artists.

Just looking at his work you can see areas in which you could edit them into a working font. The cross overs and the use of squares is incredibly clever and would have to be something that is observed and learnt in order to copy correctly and make an effective font out of.

The colour use adds a more enjoyable element to his pieces as well as helping to enforce the actual illusion when looking at them. The black backgrounds on some of the pale illusions make them stand out and really draws you into the piece, which will make me think of how to present my work.

Some of his work including curved lines also works well as they are part of the patterned pieces that more rely on obstructing the repetitive nature of the pattern on the space.

This is a simple concept and could be something to test out.

Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley is another op artist who uses pattern and line to create interesting illusions that confuse the mind and the eye.

Unlike Vasarelly Riley concentrates more on the pattern work and deconstructing the pattern in order to create an illusion in her work that can create curves that arn’t really there or make the piece look 3D when it is basically being displayed on a 2D screen.

A lot of her work is black and white which looks rather good overall and it just proves that things do not have to be in colour to look effective. Keeping the main part of my font in black and white can be effective as well as keeping a minimalistic feel to the font when adding in a complex effect.

Type Experiments

Sketches

These are my first sketches during / after the research stage. They all follow a cubist style with some taking influences from the other artists and movements I looked at.

They all use line, shapes and some of them use colour to portray the given feel of the artists.

Geometric Font

This is the geometric style font I created from the first lot of sketches I made.

After drawing out an ‘a’ in the style similar to helvetica a, I used lines to create a geometric pattern primarily made from triangles. This technique gave an almost 3d look to the font and when completely drawn looked rather effective. To take this font further, I would have to draw out more letters and repeat this style of geometric pattern ontop as well as taking them into illustrator and vectorising them.

Geometric Font Coloured

I took my geometric font into illustrator to text what the outcome of the letters would look like when vectorised and coloured. The image to the left is the original and the image to the right is the illustrator version of the font. I also used photoshop to colour the triangular sections in. Overall, the font worked well but I don’t feel as if it links into the artist influence very well.

Post it Deconstructivism This technique is one I created after reading into the history and the meanings of cubism. Some of the artists believed that they were taking a scene apart and then putting it back together with a different perspective. I took this idea and thought how I could apply it to my font. I drew an A onto various post-it notes which when lined up make a perfect capital A. I then moved the post it notes so the A was now split into various sections which emulates the cubist style of pulling something apart.

Post it Deconstructivism

I then, after pulling the A apart, found ways that I could put the A back together again so that it looked like the letter but not in the same way it did before. I twaisted pieces and I swapped some of them about and the pictures to the left are a result of my efforts. I think that this worked well and gives a really interesting look. A way to take this further would be to vectorise and attempt more letters.

Post it Deconstructivism These are the vector versions of the post-it note letters. they are equally as interesting and give a more unusual feel to the letter than they did before. I decided not to draw where the joins of the post-it notes were and this has left a very jagged but continuous outline going all of the way round the A.

Post it Deconstructivism I moved on after completing the letter A and feeling happy with the overall outcome, I attempted to use a B. The B was a lot more complicated and I had to use smaller but more post-its in order to be able to move the parts of the letter round effectively. There wasn’t much I could do to the letter bearing in mnd to two large loops on the front of the B that had to be there to evidence what letter it was, but I didn’t want to leave them untouched. Finally I produced the outcome to the left which I then took into illustrator.

Post it Deconstructivism To the left are my illustrator versions of my B in the deconstructivism style. I don’t like the B’s as much as I do the A’s but they still came out pretty well.

One of the problems I find in making these letters is that there is no uniform way to move the post-its around meaning that every letter would be incredibly different to each other. This may afftect the overall look of the font, meaning it would be scruffy and untidy, as well as being able to correctly kern the font. I think this was a good experiment to try but is not the best font and technique for me.

Op-Art Concept

This is my op-art concept. To create a good optical illusion, I drew out a block capital A on illustrator with a few lines to give the appearance that it was 3d, then flipped a section of the middle, so that all the lines still lined up but so that one section was technically facing the completely different way. This gives the font an interesting effect and still enables you to recognise what letters are actually being used.

Cubist Deconstruction Concept

This is my cubist font concept in which I draw out the same block style font with the 3d style and slice through the font, diagonally through the middle. After doing this, I slide the top piece I just cut over towards the right to give an interesting look as well as a cut and paste feel to the work. I really like this technique as it looks really interesting and will be easy to kern and organise on the page as well as being legible.

Sample Sheets

This is my font sheet showing my concept for the op-art font influenced by the artist Victor Vasarelly. In this sheet I have shown a bold use of the font, italics, thin, coloured font and a variety of sizes.

Sample Sheets This is my font sheet showing my concept for the cubism font influenced by the artist Juan Gris. In this sheet I have shown a bold use of the font, italics, and a variety of sizes.

Drawing Out Letters This printscreen shows the construction stages for the final font. I had to take a lot of time in drawing out the font as I had to make sure all the letters were consistant in width and height as well as the 3D block behind them being the right distance and thickness. This took a lot of effeort but overall the font wouldn’t look right without it.

Alphabet Base This is the final copy of my althabet that I will be using as a base for my font. Each letter has been drawn as well as its 3D element in illustrator and will now be taken into photoshop for editing. I am proud of the overall look of the base font and think that it will look effective as a final font when used.

Editing/Construction

This is the process of making the cubism font. I used photoshop to make the font and I mainly used the selection tool to achieve the look. I selected the top half of the A, sicing through the letter at a rough 45 degree angle. I then, making sure I was on the right layer, right clicked and selected ‘layer via cut’ which cut the top half of the letter A from the base half. I then used the arrow keys to slowly move the top part of the A up and across so that it sat at an angle from the rest of the letter. I then repeated this technique for the rest of the alphabet.

Final Outlook This is the final product of which I am proud of. All the letter look unique in their own way as well as still being legible, Displayed to the right is the whole alphabet in my style font and a test page with the font being used in the middle.

Bold/Italics

On the right hand side of the page I have created a bold and italic version of my font using photoshop.

Colours

Advert

This is the advert for my font featuring the whole alphabet and displaying the different point sizes of the font

Website

This is my website concept page as inspired by the one currently in use by the Font Bureau inc.

Specimen Book

This is the specimen book pages for my font. If I were to expand this project I would include numbers into the font.