letterform Project

The purpose of this project was to learn about the different types of text, their different characteristics, and their anatomy. There are different fonts and within those fonts, there are even more variations of the same font. The basic letter anatomy is the baseline, x-height, cap height, and descender. The baseline is where the majority of the letters rest. But there are some exceptions to some letters, for example, the letter “y” because the tail of the letter goes below the baseline making the tail a descender. The x-height is halfway between the cap height and the baseline (sometimes it can be about 1/3 from the cap height). At last, the cap height is opposite from the baseline. The cap height is the line that tells the letters how tall they can be. Obviously depending on the font, there is more specific anatomy regarding those fonts.

First I started drawing words in different fonts so I could get a sense of the different texts that could be made. My name I just made out of imagination. I really liked how the letter “z” is smaller than the rest of the letters. For the word “block” I wanted the letters to have sharp corners so they would connect with the meaning of the word. I am a huge Star Wars fan, so I decided to draw out the word “dark” but decrease the darkness as it went to the right because the light of the lightsaber would illuminate the letters that are closer to it.

What I would do next if I were to continue working with these letters is play around with them until I create a logo. I feel that if I printed a word I would include pictures and try different fonts out to achieve creating something interesting. I would also like to print using different ink colors, not just black. Maybe even trying to make one bright color foreshadow the black word or vice versa. These three drawings helped me practice my letter shapes

What I learned about working with letter forms is that they are hard to work with. To be able to manually print them in the same baseline and to remove most of the “shatter” outside the letters was a lot of work. I had to sit down to relax for a second and think of a good idea of how to make the word look better. I usually like to just dive in and figure out as I go but if I didn’t sit down and think for this project, the word would come out without a proper shape that would look horrible. I also learned that hand printing is really messy which makes the ink go everywhere if you are not careful.

At the final critique for this project, my classmates brought to my attention that including the hands and the flame with the word “burn” was not that good of an idea because it was more attention grabbing than the actual word itself which was not the goal. I decided for the process book to play around with the word flame and delete the hands. The letters are still made out of a fire picture and I placed the letters in an upside down “v” shape because that is the shape of a fire flame.

Image that I decided to change