Joe Leadbeater
Madison
OUGD603
Extended Practice
Brief 01 — Madison
Background
Target Audience / Tone of Voice
Madison Regular is a serif font, developed for body copy usage. It’s serifs are influenced by 1960’s advertising display type, designed on Madison Avenue, New York City. I developed the typeface at ‘Type Clinic’, a week long typographic workshop in Trenta, Slovenia, in the summer of 2014.
The target audience is obviously designers and typographers willing to spend money on purchasing the typeface. I also considered promoting the typeface to design studios, as I feel type design is a skill that studios may look for when considering placements and internships.
At the end of the workshop I had developed an uppercase, lowercase, numerals, and a few glyphs (all in Semi-Bold, not Regular).
The tone of voice within the specimen should reflect the connotations of the typeface, as well as expressing the concept behind it.
Brief
Mandatory Deliverables
Make the appropriate changes to the regular, to allow a consistent weight across all characters. You may also add common ligatures to increase readability at small scale. Develop a bold font to compliment the regular counterpart, that can be used for display point sizes.
- A full Latin typeface, in Regular and Semi- Bold. - Extended Characters Sets - Ligatures & Mathematic Symbols - A specimen that highlights the typeface’s characteristics.
Both the regular and bold should be promoted in the form of a type specimen.
- Minimum of 3 A3 design boards. - Portfolio standard photography outcome.
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Joe Leadbeater
OUGD603
ABCDEFGHIJK LMNOPQRSTUV WXYZ
Extended Practice
Regular overlayed onto Semi-Bold.
A test of both weights.
abcdefghijkl mnopqrstuvw xyz
A test of both weights.
0123456789 !£$&(){}:;“?[ ]‘,.-_— 01
The Existing Typeface
Brief 01 — Madison
Analyzing The Existing Characters
Working From Semi-Bold To Regular
Above you can see the character set that was completed before the start of 3rd year, all in Semi-Bold. I was pleased with these characters, and decided there was very little to change about them (apart from the metrics).
Although this is a non-standard way of working, my initial inspiration were display typefaces that were found in bold or thicker weights. After researching into the difference in weight, I found that Bold fonts tend to be 700 (of any measurement) in stem thickness, whilst Regular should be 400. My Semi-Bold was in between at 550, so the Regular was created at 400. Previously I had classified the Semi-Bold as Bold, so this helped creating a better definition.
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Joe Leadbeater
02
OUGD603
Adding Foreign Characters
Extended Practice
Brief 01 — Madison
Researching into Other Languages
Ligatures & Unique Characters
Before designing any diacritics for foreign languages, it was important to research into the languages and their character usage. This enabled me to understand alignment, thickness & height of the characters.
Research was undertaken into functional ligatures (eg. fi, fl, ft), as well as stylistic ligatures (such as at, ct, ch), which would add artistic flare.
Although I would have liked to develop Cyrillic & Greek characters, the alphabet is completely alien to me, so the process would be far too time consuming.
I also wanted to add unique characters to my typeface that would separate it from existing work, which is why the interrobang, the asterism & the irony mark were added.
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Joe Leadbeater
03
OUGD603
Specimen Content
Extended Practice
Brief 01 — Madison
Research Methods
Colours
I was unsure as to what to display in terms of specimen content, but was inspired by the research methods of a project by Neubau, a Berlin based studio. Their recent catalogue ‘Neubau Forst’ (top left) is composed of images of tree, found when they overlayed their logotype over Berlin, mapping the locations and finding trees there.
After researching into existing speciments, I realised it was best to use a basic colour scheme. For this reason, only black, grey and ‘New York Taxi’ Orange (Pantone 123U) were used.
I decided to do the same with ‘Madison’ written in Semi-Bold, overlayed over the centre of Madison Avenue. Instead of trees, I noted addresses which were then used in the specimen.
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Joe Leadbeater
04
OUGD603
Final Specimen
Extended Practice
Progression Although most specimens simply display a finalised typeface, I thought it was important to show my progression. In it’s early stages, Madison SemiBold was rendered by hand, something I wanted to show. For this reason, my working notes and annotations were scanned in to show. It is also interesting to follow the progression from such early stages to later on in the project.
Brief 01 — Madison
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Joe Leadbeater
04
OUGD603
Final Specimen
Extended Practice
Bodycopy Comparisons Bodycopy is displayed at a variety of point sizes, in both Regular & SemiBold. This is so the reader of the specimen can compare it’s legibility at different point sizes. Each section of paragraphs were annotated with the point size they were set in too, to aid this process.
Brief 01 — Madison
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Joe Leadbeater
04
OUGD603
Final Specimen
Extended Practice
Address Examples As mentioned before, the addresses used were systematically chosen. The above two spreads show how these addresses were used, at different point sizes and weights. Although the extended characters are for use in other languages, the easiest way to show off as many of these characters as possible was to use the addresses found, and replace the characters with extended letters that are similar in shape.
Brief 01 — Madison
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Joe Leadbeater
04
OUGD603
Final Specimen
Extended Practice
Displayed The Characters Simply As well as having some fun with specimen, it’s important to also (quite simply) display the characters as they are. This is so that the reader would know exactly what they would be getting if the typeface was bought. These spreads displayed the Regular next to the Semi-Bold so a comparison can be made between the two.
Brief 01 — Madison
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Joe Leadbeater
04
OUGD603
Final Specimen
Extended Practice
Playful Characters When demonstrating the usage of ligatures and the unque characters, it was important to use a more playful tone of voice. These characters are less likely to be used in something serious, but in a more artistic and fun way.
Brief 01 — Madison
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Joe Leadbeater
05
OUGD603
Additional Material
Extended Practice
A1 Poster As a cheaper option, an A1 poster has been made, summarising the specimen. This works well to view Madison’s characters all at once. It conveys all of the main characteristics of the face, such as bodycopy usage, display usage, ligatures & unique characters.
Brief 01 — Madison
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Joe Leadbeater
05
OUGD603
Additional Material
Extended Practice
A3 Posters Again, these are a cheaper option as oppose to the specimen. These could come free when a specimen or the typeface is bought. I’ve created a selection, all of which are double sided with a quote on the front, and information about the typeface on the back. Some of the quotes are from inside the specimen, and some of them are from 1960’s adverts.
Brief 01 — Madison
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