Michael Brown
January
Colophon Foundry
Colophon Foundry
Colophon Foundry is a digital type foundry based in Highbury & Islington, in North London, and it was here that I spent some time learning about them, a typical type foundry's work flow, and most importantly, type design as a practice and career choice. The studio was small; with only Edd Harrington & Anthony Sheret as the lead designers and founders of the foundry, and Tom Baber & Laurette Colmard as additional type designers. 4
Work Placement
Day 1
Studio Space
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Work Placement
Day 1
Studio Space
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Work Placement
Day 1
Font Re-mastering
On day 1, Edd had gotten me started straight away. To test the waters with Glyphs, he wanted me to start working on remastering an existing font. Lisbon is a beautiful stencil typeface inspired by the signs and stencils found around the city of Lisbon, and it was my job to fill in any missing glyphs; allowing me to learn about an existing typeface and how to build upon expand on it. The Turkish Lira, shown left, was the first glyph I drew from scratch.
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Work Placement
Day 1
Font Re-mastering
After becoming more confident, I started on a series of old style figures. 11
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Work Placement
Day 1
Font Re-mastering
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Colophon Foundry
Heading into the second full day, Edd had told me about a photographer client who had approached them wanting a cursive, handwritten style font, with a stylised typewriter face to go along with it. While the project had already been briefly started, Edd and I started working on a series of cursive letterforms; investigating how they'd connect up and fit together.
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Work Placement
Day 2
Cursive Lettering
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Work Placement
Day 2
Cursive Lettering
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Work Placement
Day 2
Cursive Lettering
Researching old cursive typewriter fonts, we started sketching in glyphs potential ways letters could connect. 19
Colophon Foundry
My task was then to start working on the regular style, called Judith Mono. With this singular glyph drawn by Edd as reference, i got to work. 20
Work Placement
Day 3
Type Sketches
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Work Placement
Day 3
Type Sketches
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Work Placement
Day 4
Digital Sketches
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Work Placement
Day 5
Feedback & Review
A huge part of the studio's practice was to print off the forms and review them the old fashioned way. Edd and I worked through many sheets like this. I learned a lot about what to look out for, and how looking at printed type can be hugely beneficial after spending hours staring at a screen.
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Work Placement
Day 6
Alternates
I was given a lot of freedom to work on styles that i think worked or didn't work, with us all in the studio choosing the strongest glyphs. Designing many different styles was a huge help.
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Work Placement
Overgrou Northern Kens Strikes! Mind the 30
Day 7
Word Tests
und Line n sal Rise ! e gap 31
Colophon Foundry
Work Placement
COLOPHON FOUNDRYest.2009 N'London !abcXYZ� 32
Day 8
Mono Alignment
abcdefgh ijklmnop qrstuvwx yzABCDEF GHIJKLMN 33
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Work Placement
Day 9
Number Sketches
After finishing off the basic alphabet, I moved onto the numbers & symbols which was hugely fun. The challenge was thinking how the ball terminal will fit into the forms.
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Work Placement
Day 10
Digital Variations
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Work Placement
Day 11
Digital Variations
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Work Placement
£
Day 12
Currency Symbols
Â¥
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Work Placement
£45–¥6 #197; X=4,263 42
Day 12
Number Tests
6013 (128) 3.45 94°E* 43
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Work Placement
Day 13
Extra Work
As we were nearing the end of the two weeks, and almost finished with my work on Judith, I revisited Lisbon and took on some extra tasks, going back to re-mastering. I drew more complex glyphs, becoming more confident in not only the practical skills of using Glyphs but the more technical tasks like anchors and component glyphs.
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Work Placement
Day 14
Final Thoughts
In the grand scheme of type design, two weeks is a very short period of time. While I didn't manage to finish all the glyphs of a full typeface, I created what I consider my first real extensive font, learned a huge amount from some great people, and developed a huge passion for type design which I will definitely continue to expand.
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© Michael Brown 2020
With thanks to Colophon Foundry