Digital Arts and Design
Assignment 1: Decorative Typeface
In this assignment, we are asked to create a decorative typeface of any kind. The purpose of this assignment is for us to apply design fundamentals and disciplines involves in producing a digital artwork.
For this decorative assignment typeface, I decided to create a typeface using something that I like which is either be Electronic or Lego, since I like these two things I decided to create 2 separate plan just in case the plan didn't work.
Pre-Production Phase
In this phase I made a list of something that I like and then make a mind map of it. Few days later, I found out that there are many of the electronic typeface available online, so creating another one may lead to some plagiarism issue. I end up moving to the second plan which is using Lego, but instead of the bricks I will use the head as the basic building blocks. The image below shows the mind map I created along the time when planning for this typeface.
Once I have finish creating my mind map, I proceed on creating my mood board. When creating the mood board, I browse online for ideas and didn't see any Lego Head Typefaces so I proceed with my idea. The image below shows the mood board that I created.
Production Phase
In this phase I started to create the basic block of the whole typeface, which is the Lego head. First, I traced the Lego head to get the perfect shape of it so that I can use it for my typeface. Next I shrink them into a small 1 by 1 grid so that I can align them perfectly easily. The image below shows the 2 separated pieces that I used as my basic building blocks, one of them has the top part and the other didn't.
Next, I place them properly with an outline of a letter at the back of it so that I will be easier for me to align them. The image below shows how the result of the alignment of the pieces.
Once I finish creating every letter and number for the typeface using Adobe Illustrator, I them to Font Lab so that I can make them into an actual fonts. I made the height of each letter different from each other so that we can differentiate the uppercase and the lowercase letter. I purposely made the base height of the small letter to be 500 and the maximum height of the small letter to be 700. As for the capital letter I decided to make the base height to be 700 same goes to the numbers. The images below shows the lowercase "r" and uppercase "C" in the FontLab workspace.
Post Production
With the typeface done, I created a character set for the typeface and use them as reference. The image below shows the character set of the typeface for Uppercase, Lowercase and Numbers
For conclusion, creating a typeface is harder than I thought and I end up spending some time in the Font Lab since the Font Lab doesn't remove the eye socket, hence I have to remove them manually.
