AIGA Type Tuesday – Interview and typographic illustration
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I had recently completed my experimental typographic project BLK LTR Series and fortunately AIGA [American Institute of Graphic Arts] writer Angela Riechers, stumbled upon it. Angela subsequently invited me to take part in an interview, and illustrate a quote using the style, for their regular Type Tuesday feature. I was obviously keen to take part, but nervous about using the type style, as so far I had only created separate bespoke glyphs. The nature of the design also meant that it worked best at large scale, but the quote I had been given was rather long!
The hardest thing to see
is what is in front of our eyes.
is what is in front of our eyes.
Fortunately, it contained a key, integral word – 'FRONT'. Consequently, the style was applied solely for that word to ensure the letterforms could maintain sufficient scale. In addition to this, I had deliberately designed them to be one-offs rather than consistent, as you would for an actual typeface, so I was also concerned how they would work when combined to form complete words.
For the original project only a few characters had been developed. I had the 'R O N', but was missing the 'F' and 'T'. Fortunately I had created a '7' which formed the basis for the 'F', which in turn supplied the building blocks for the 'T'. As feared the 'R' was not in-keeping with the style of the 'O', so this was re-drawn to match. Finally the abstract spacing used for the original BLK LTR poster designs directed the layout for the remainder of the quote.
In addition to AIGA the BLK LTR Series has been featured on Design Week, Creative Boom, Typostrate, Behance and awarded best of Typography in the 2016 Creativepool Annual.
