skinnyfat a look at letterforms
Kelsey Beyer
From the beginning of this project, I knew I wanted my letterforms to be smooth. Though they were to be made from silhouettes of myself, I wanted to turn them into something less organic and more rounded. This proved to be a more difficult task than I expected, no thanks to a sweatshirt I was wearing that day. There was absolutely no way my letterforms were going to be slender and smooth now, and I wasn’t too happy about it. After I took my photos, though, I had a change of heart. These silhouettes provided something much more interesting than I had imagined: letters that could be skinny on the ends (where my arms and legs were) and fat where my sweatshirt was bulking up. I’ve always (half) joked that I’m skinny-fat. I don’t eat healthily, but I have a fast metabolism. These letters now represent me: skinnyfat
The ‘k’ had a fairly obvious position in my mind, but it resulted in one problem: a lowercase ‘k.’ I decided to ensure the rest of my name would be in uppercase. This would create a backwards small caps feeling and add interest to my typeface.
Some of the letters proved to be a bit more intimate than I bargained for. This formation was the easiest to create an uppercase ‘e,’ and it accentuated my skinny-fat theme.
The ‘l’ was the most obvious of the letterforms to create. I already knew it needed to be uppercase to continue my “opposite small caps.” The rest, as they say, is history.
‘S’ was a much different story. This letter was the hardest to create, as I knew it would be. How could I get true curves with the rigid joints of the human anatomy? Short answer: I couldn’t. After nearly falling over is what looked like a Michael Jackson dance move, I got something close enough to my vision that could be inked the way I wanted.
The ‘y’ did not go as smoothly as I thought it would. It was the first letter I attempted, as I thought it would be the easiest, but it made me quickly discover I would need to take a new approach to my letters. Slender was not going to happen. This is when I decided a skinny-fat theme would be my strongest option, given my sweatshirt.
For my first draft of my name, I attempted to arrange the letters in a way that could be inked to have an even baseline and proper kerning. This was my initial arrangement.
My first inking proved to be a little sub-par. The kerning of my letters was not correct at all. However, the basic letterforms were exactly what I was looking for. I was still able to see the original images just enough to envision the photo, but to the naked eye, it didn’t look like a human.
My second inking provided much better results. The kerning of these letters was more even and generally closer. It provided an element of “cute” that I didn’t anticipate would be there, but I enjoy it. The final resulting letters are fun, interesting, and unique. Though they look a bit strange by themselves, they work together perfectly.
stem
stem
terminal shoulder
crotch
crotch
serif
terminal terminal
arm arm
stem
serif
terminal arm
spine
arm
ascender
x height stem stem baseline
terminal
leg leg
leg leg
terminal terminal shoulder
counter