CENTURY GOTHIC Animated by Sean Davis Music: “Poppyseed” – Poddington Bear, “Givers” – Lucky Dragons
This is a 21st century take on one of design’s oldest components, dating back thousands of years – type. Animating a typeface is one of the most contemporary ways of transforming what was once purely static into something that fits into todays motion-driven designs.
Creating a typeface requires a great deal of thought. It must be consistent and flow well together as one cohesive family of forms. Characters with similar elements should be constructed in similar ways. Animating a typeface can be treated much the same way. While it’s easy to animate each character with its own unique look, when gathered in larger blocks of text, it can be more functional to take characters with similar elements and animate them with similar ideas. A well designed typeface allows the reader to flow through words without getting distracted by individual characters and their specific forms. When animating a font, an identical approach should be taken. Similar characters should be animated in a similar way, yet still
come to a resolution that allows the reader to easily distinguish it from the other forms without having to put much time into it. This can be done by grouping characters together, then animating them as such, pulling queues from each other where similarities lie. For Century Gothic, I grouped the letters into groups. These groups were inspired by Karen Cheng’s Designing Type. Much of my grouping is taken directly from her book, but some of them have been modified in consideration of Century Gothic’s specific forms. Though not all the forms in these groups are animated in an identical way, it is merely a way to collect the letters into groups of similar forms as a way to get started.
round uppercase & lowercase
Round forms are simply that, they primarily consist of a modified circle. Both in the uppercase and lowercase, these round forms share a popping bubble animation. Their distinguishing elements are not visible until the bubble is popped. Much like when writing a round form, as first it appears to be a circle, but is not distinguished until the finishing stroke, or lack there of, is made.
round square uppercase
Round square forms are forms that have a heavy round influence, but also a significant vertical squared off element as well. In the uppercase, these can further be broken down into the two-story characters of B, P, and R, the hooked characters of J and U, and the large simple design of D. When animating them, these further subgroupings played a significant influence.
round square lowercase
Round square forms are forms that have a heavy round influence, but also a significant vertical squared off element as well. In the lowercase, these forms are dominantly round, but with a vertical protruding off one side to help square it off. This vertical is what distinguishes all the lowercase round square forms from each other.
square uppercase
Square forms, in Century Gothic’s case, only exist in the uppercase. These forms are created using purely horizontal and vertical strokes. Since these strokes are all perpendicular to each other, they are put into the square category.
diagonal uppercase
Uppercase diagonal forms are those that are constructed almost entirely of prominent diagonals. Since these are constructed primarily of the same diagonal line, just placed in different locations or quantities, that’s how they were animated. All diagonal strokes “slide out� from their previous stroke until the entire letter is constructed.
diagonal lowercase
Lowercase diagonal forms are nearly identical to the uppercase diagonals, in that they are constructed almost entirely of prominent diagonals. Since these are so similar, they also are animated by having their diagonal strokes “slide out� from their previous stroke until the entire letter is constructed.
diagonal square uppercase & lowercase
Diagonal square forms exist in both the uppercase and lowercase. These are letters that contain very strong horizontals or verticals, or near verticals, but also have a larger diagonal element as well. The unique thing about diagonal square forms, is though they can be grouped together, it’s hard to animate them in a similar way since their construction varies so much.
vertical lowercase
Vertical forms are more significant in the lowercase, thus this group was only used in the lowercase. This group consists of letters whose primary design element is a vertical line. Some of these letters have small hooks or crossbars, but in relation to the strong vertical, they are secondary.
branched lowercase
Branched forms are most notably a unique group to the lowercase. They consist of curved branch-like forms typically coming out from a vertical stroke. In most other fonts, the lower case “u” would also have a vertical coming from the right side, but in Century Gothic’s case it does not. It still best fits in with this group though, because to the reader, it’s implied that it is a similar form due to the way it’s constructed and the way your eye looks over it.