Artist Typeface by Georgia Stubbs

Artist Typeface www.artisttypefaceproject.tumblr.com u1260528

B ri e f

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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 specimen page to be included in the Font Bureau One - Line Type Specimens book. You should document all stages of the research and design process, which should demonstrate a critical understanding of the design process. You should be inventive and demonstrate your ingenuity in solving this design challenge. It is important you generate several design solutions, taking your selected justified idea forward to a final refined solution.

Essential Requirements • Broad visual investigation into a range of Artist & Designers. • From your investigations, sample at least three Artists & Designers and demonstrate there suitability for transcription into a typeface. • Design the whole alphabet based on your chosen artist/designer and demonstrate the font working at different sizes. • Evidence the process of contrast and design refinement. • Produce both a full colour and black & white version of the typeface. • Produce an advert for the typeface which should include copy which explains the origin and potential use of the font.

Approach • Communication is top of the agenda and you should be able to justify and critically reflect on your research. • Care should be taken in the preparation and presentation of your research and final solutions, as this is a major part of the brief. • You should demonstrate skills in critical refinement and production. Evidence through layout process. • The research should be presented in logical format and should be annotated. • Any photo’s used in research and design work which are not your own must be credited. • You should document all stages of the development process. • Ensure you have completed all aspects of the brief

of the human mind, “Oftheallbirththeofachievements the alphabet is the most momentous.” ................................................................................................

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His designs scream modernism and his variety of shapes and lines and abstractness give him a clear style. The abstractness creates in some cases an almost kaleidoscope feel.

Martin SatĂ gives name to a small graphic studio located in Seville city that started its professional journey in 2006, focusing his work on art direction, graphic design and illustration.

//Martin Sati

Sabrina Ward Harrison is an artist and author who was born in Canada in 1975. She now lives in Oakland where she teaches art. The image below is from â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Art Journal.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; The materials used are paper, water, coulours, ink, pastels, fine liners and coloured pencils. It looks like she started with a bland piece of paper and created a base of colours with paint then gradually added detail. I think this piece of art tells me a lot about Harrison. She has wrote New York with home sweet home below it, indicating she feels at home when sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s there. Looking at the colours, it gives the impression that she feels NY is a hectic city. The vibrant colours make me feel that she thinks the city is fun, and the cluterness of the design perhaps represents the business of NY. I think the street light is show to symbolise a city that never sleeps.

//Sabrina Ward Harrison

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is one of the most well known and influential artist in history. He was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, and stake artist. He is also knowns for his support on the cubist movement. This design is from Picasso’s ‘Blue Period’ and is a self portrait of Picasso himself, using sharp triangular shapes in a variety of shades of blue. I think the sharp shames will work well in a typeface.

//Pablo Picasso

Bo130 is an artist who is part of the microbe. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a graphic designer from the London College of Printing. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a graphic designer , illustrator and street artist, getting his information from the urban lifestyle.

Bo130

Robert Delaunay was a French artist. His key contributions to abstract painting refer to his bold use of color, and a clear love of experimentation of both depth and tone.

His use of circles is something I could incorporate into a typeface

//Robert Delaunay

Again, the abstractness of the designs are what really draws me to these. I love how you have to look more deeply into the pieces to see the type.

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Johns was born in Augusta, Ga. in 1930, where he began his career as a commercial artist, producing displays for New York shop windows. In 1958 he had his first one-man exhibition, a rousing success. With his friend R. Rauschenberg, he is considered largely responsible for the vogue for Pop art. His images depict commonplace two-dimensional objects (e.g., flags, maps, targets, numbers, letters of the alphabet) in simple colors. His banal subject matter and rejection of emotional expression departed radically from the Abstract Expressionism that then dominated the U.S. art scene. From 1961 he began to attach real objects to his canvases. In the 1970s he produced paintings composed of clusters of parallel lines that he called â&#x20AC;&#x153;crosshatchings.â&#x20AC;?

//Jasper Johns

Natalia Goncharova was a Russian avant-garde artist (cubo-futurism) painter, costume designer, writer, illustrator, and set designer. The two designs here are formed by overlapping lines creating an abstract image. I think the cross-over styled lines could work well in a typeface.

//Natalia Goncharova

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Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession he was offered a professorship at the University of Dorpat where he began painting studies at the age of 30. Kandinsky was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow, and returned to Germany in 1921. There, he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, became a French citizen in 1939, and produced some of his most prominent art. He died in 1944.

//Kandinsky

Typographer research ................................................................................................

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E Y A. Here’s the first typeface I created. I wanted to bring through the child like, fun, Mariscal has in his fonts, and I believe it worked well. I like the old school diner feel it has to it, and would be interesting to develop and expand this.

AHKNPT I tried to just let go and have fun with these letters, and I think this shows in the designs.

Javier Mariscal, who was born in Valencia in 1950, has developed his professional career in Barcelona. The Mediterranean culture of both cities is revealed in his work: he has inherited the hedonism, optimism and symbolism that characterise his designs from it, as well as the vibrant range of colours and his poetic approach. Before dealing with projects from a multidisciplinary point of view became a recognised value, his professional activity was already highlighted by moving from one discipline to another without complexes, thanks to his untiring curiosity and his passion to innovate to contribute to make everyday life more interesting, easier and friendlier.

What Mariscal provides is more than a liberation, it is a form of emancipation from those academic conventionalisms which frequently divest everything that is artistic of life”. - Steven Heller, New York Times critic. New York.

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ACI

The thing that attracted me to Mariscal and his teams work is that the fun he has whilst creating his products is clearly evident in his work and really comes through into his designs. I love the almost child like style to his type, and thing that patterns within the letters give them an extra unique effect.

I quite like the shape of these letters I designed. They could be developed into a further inter testing typeface.

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His universe, which is both personal and popular, has a timeless energy, it is universal”. - Chantal Hamaide, Director of Intramuros magazine. Paris.

Mariscal//

Pablo Picasso// ................................................................................................

Pablo Picasso is probably one of the most influential and well known artists in history. His quirky take on the human form and the mainuplation of As shapes is widely recognised throughout the art world. The use of colour is key in his work and the way he perceives shape is a idea I want to take into of a typeface. Pablo Picasso is one of the most well known artists in history and is still influencing the world. His manipulation of shapes conformed with the human body is what makes his work so recognisable and different. The use of colour is a key aspect to his work, not always blending well together, but sometimes clashing, created a very effective piece of work. His quirkiness is something I would like to experiment with through typeface.

Picasso shapes

is I

well known for his interesting tried to influence that into

manipulation my letters.

Jean Dubuffet//

Jean Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His style, rather than a realistic approach, was to outline his belief of what Jean Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His style, rather than a realistic approach, was to outline his belief of what was more humanistic. Because of this, his work stands out significantly, using a variety of odd shapes to create a unique design. was more humanistic. Because of this, his work stands out significantly, using a variety of odd shapes to create a unique design. Dubuffet uses simple patterns with a sample of colours throughout his shapes, drawing the viewers eyes to the subjects. Dubuffet uses simple patterns with a sample of colours throughout his shapes, drawing the viewers eyes to the subjects.

Pierre Di Scuillo//

Di Sciullo was born in Paris in 1961. He came to typography through his self-published journal Qui? Résiste, which he started at the age of 23. By then he had already worked as a comic and press illustrator.

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I was expected to work with existing characters, and I certainly derived no pleasure from that … I realised then that it was not about getting a diploma but doing things that counted.”

His work of it. I

is extremely modern think some of the

in my opinion, and i’m drawn to the simplicity best fonts are the one’s with the least to them.

My initial experiment here was to see if the typeface would work in black and white as well as it did in colour. Unfortunately i don’t think it has the same effect as it does with colour, but if I were to carry on and develop the typeface, I could perhaps design something a little more interesting than just the simple square letters.

Armin Hofmann//

Armin Hofmann was one of the pioneers of the International Typographic Style, a new graphic design style that emerged in Switzerland in the 1950s to become the predominant graphic style in the world by the 1970s. Ideally suited to the expanding global postwar marketplace, the style was refined at two design schools in Switzerland, one in Basel under the leadership of Armin Hofmann and Emil Ruder, and the other in Zürich led by Joseph Muller-Brockmann. Mr. Hofmann’s work with the Basel school is characterized by stark black-and-white photography, typographic restraint, and a keen awareness of graphic space. His work is enormously varied, including posters, stage design, logos, typographic work, and threedimensional designs. I like the abstractness used in some of Hoffmans work, and I’m drawn to how you don’t have to show every aspect of a letter for it to be visible. This is something I would like to experiment with.

Artist experiments

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Martin Sati//

Here I experimented with a variety of shapes Martin Sati used in his designs. As Sati’s main technique is Illustrator, I formed shapes on Illustrator seeing if I could get typeface out of the shapes. Here I found a ‘B’ that I quite like.

Sabrina Ward Harrison//

Sabrina Ward Harrison uses a variety of media to form her art. I particularly enjoyed created work influenced by here. The left photos are designs I created Influenced by Ward, using a mixture of paint, papers and ink. On the right hand side is an example of a typeface I could create. I experimented with water colours, ink, pencils and oil pastels for this.

Pablo Picasso//

Pablo Picasso used triangular shapes to form a portrait of his face, so to start I experimented with different materials, varying in texture, depth and tones of colour to form collages of triangles. I then experimented with what kind of typeface I could create with this. Above I created a number of Bâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s.

Bo130//

Bo130 is well known for his use of ink. In the top right hand corner is a drawing a drew to get me in the mood of Bo130. To the left you can see my experiments with ink. Although I really like the outcome of the letters B, A, O, and C Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m not sure this would work well on Illustrator, as I think you have to visually see the type in real form, so you can get the full feel of the font. What you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see here is that the letters have an amazing texture to them, lifting off the page.

Robert Dela una y //

Robert Delauneys designs had letters jumping out at me, so I was enthusiastic to start experimenting with the kinds of typeface I could create influenced by him. I tried a variety of media ranging from print, to paint to oil pastels, but I was bitterly disappointed when I realized these donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t look as special on Illustrator (See bottom left.)

Jasper Johns//

I really enjoyed experimenting with Johns style of work. Here I tried paint on crayon, oil pastels on paint, crayon on oil pastels, and many more. Jasper Johns use of lines in his designs were something I wanted to bring through into a typeface.

Natalia Goncharova//

Natalia Goncharovaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s main style of work is paint, but I thought Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d give it a try with a variety of media, ranging from ink, oil pastels, paint, pencils, fine liners, and crayons. I personally like this font, but my main worry is where would I go from here? Do I see this developing?

Kandinsky//

I absolutely love Kandinskyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s style of work so couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wait to start exploring with this. To the left are drawings I drew influenced by him to see where I could get a typeface from. To the right are some of the letters I found from the work I had designed. I personally love where this could lead, and think it has several directions it could go in.

Development of chosen 3 ................................................................................................

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Sabrina Ward Harrison// ................................................................................................

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Here are my experiments with Sabrina Ward Harrison. I tried out a variety of sizes, colours, sentences and both hand drawn and digital versions of the typeface. Harrison uses very elegant, natural colours in her work so I brought this into the type and thought it worked nicely with the fun font that was forming. It also works well as I believe Harrisons work is very feminine, which is transcribed into the font. The type that is forming is very fun in a child like way and comes across as very expressive, like Sabrina Wards works. It’s very unformal and the imperfections are what makes it relate to her work.. The weight is always thin, with a thin black stroke as the outline. The font also varies and length and width, suggesting that it wouldn’t work as a widely used font, only for specific things, perhaps as a title. As much as I do like this typeface, once transcribed onto Illustrator, it lacks the special natural touch it has to it on paper, hand drawn. The colours don’t work as well as they do on paper, as the different shades don’t blend and show too good.

Jasper Johns//

.......................................................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................................................... As much as I enjoyed experimenting with Jasper Johns style, I found it hard to create an original typeface that I could happily say I was satisfied with. The type looks good when behind a nice piece of painting etc, but once put onto Illustrator,, I found my fonts lacking in originality and imagination. I wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t feeling very inspired and couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see where I could develop this further, so I chose to move on to another artist.

Kandinsky//

I was excited to start developing Kandinskyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s typeface further and started by writing his name and trying a variety of colours and sizes. Kandinskyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s style has a very geometric feel to it, so I tried to incorporate this into the typeface. I kept the colours primary and tried to keep the font as fun as possible. With the extreme use of angles, the type gives of a mathematics vibe and would be great for maths related designs. The weight varies, with thin strokes and a variety of layers.

Here I wrote a a couple of words to do with Kandinsky to see if the typeface works together. I believe it does and will continue to develop this further.

Kandinsky. The chosen artist. ................................................................................................

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My experiments with each individual letter.

Each letter finalized.

Alphabet finalized.

Sizes

Alphabet in a variety of sizes, showing it works well in both small and large scale.

Sentences Experimenting with sentences in a variety of sizes.

Regular

Bold

Regular Colour

Bold Colour

Experimentation with a mixture of colours.

Advert

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Four advertisements I designed for my typeface. As Kandinsky stands out more on the bottom two, I am pulled towards either of them. Initially I prefer the bottom left, as I like Kandinsky being the only thing with colour in, making it the main focal point, although I will go on and see if I can develop it more to make it the best it can be.

Final advertisement.

I chose to have the white against the black as I think it stands out the most, making the font have an impression on the viewer. The only colour on the advert is in the word Kandinsky, making it the main focal point which was my aim.

Font Bureau Specimen book front cover ................................................................................................

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Research

I researched previous Font Bureau Specimen books to educate myself on how the company likes to present themselves. The front covers are very consistent, with only the use of 3 colours and all have a bold look to them.

Font Bureau Specimen; front cover I wanted to keep the colours down to a minimum in the cover, and tried to keep it as natural as possible. I like the simplicity of my design.

Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the final cover. Although I like the previous one I designed, I decided to go ahead and develop it further. I think overall it matches with the rest of Font Bureauâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s covers which is good for the consistency. I kept the colours down to the three basic ones, black, red and white.

Website

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Final Website

References

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http://flyergoodness.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/arminhofmann.html

http://www.mariscal.com/en/projects/mariscal-en-la-pedrera/

www.sabrinawardharrison.com

http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/

http://www.jasperjohns.com/art.shtml

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/kandinsky/

http://www.quiresiste.com/encours.php?lang=fr

http://www.fontbureau.com/

http://www.bo130.org/

http://aestheticperspectives.com/inventing-abstraction-1910-1925-moma/

http://www.martinsati.com/ http://www.dubuffet.com/ http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/robert-delaunay-992 http://www.picasso.fr/us/picasso_page_index.php