[p4]: 3

Digital Exploration

After the pen sketches, I made many of them on illustrator. Some of my ideas were easier to manipulate on the computer rather than just with a pen, and vice versa. This optional step really helped me narrow down which ones I wanted to refine, which were the final 3: iterations monograms made with Onyx, Antonio, and Serifa.

[p4]: 2

Manual Iterations

These 30 marks are my first ventures into exploring ligatures and monograms for JFK. I want to convey the messages I derived from my research. NYC is bold and unlike anywhere else in the world, so this monogram should reflect that.

[p4]: 1

Welcome to New York City! 
New York is a hub of culture for the entire world. Its' international airport is the most frequently used international gateway in America, reminiscent of its Ellis Island days. NYC is a blend of cultures from all over the world. It has slums like Harlem and Brooklyn and also booming metropolises like Manhattan. This diversity culminates in one big attitude: you don't mess with New York.

p3 Final

See more of this project on Behance...

Development

The phase of my project that grew the most from start to finish was my text-based version. Here's the chronology of how I got from point A to point Z

The copy required a lot of refinement, as well as the images. The idea was reminiscent of a hindu god with many arms, but in execution it did not come across clearly. Reducing the images to outlines and spreading them out more left them as effective visual aids but not too distracting or confusing.

Tango Inspiration

This video was instrumental in showing me how the tango works. They do the basic steps as well as more intricate ones.

Further inspiration came from these infographics on how to dance to Gangnam style. Why was Gangnam style THE go-to for dance infographics on google AND pinterest AND tumblr? You'll have to consult the internet for the answer to that.

These demonstrate how you can illustrate motion without animation. Just point out the important parts in the freeze frames of the dance.

p3: 2

Small Caps
Small-caps are a font style that is a scaled down version of regular caps, with the actual capitals of the words being a little taller than the "lowercase" capitals. Beware false small caps! Small caps can not be derived from a function on Word like italicize is commonly used; small caps can only exist if they're created for a type face's family. Fake small caps are the wrong height, with vertical strokes that are too light. Real small caps are painstakingly created by their typographer to blend with the normal version of their typeface. And all caps is JUST FOR SCREAMING AT A UNIFIED X HEIGHT.

Bauer Bodoni has small caps! As a bonus Jonas, the small caps family also contains the unlined figures of Bauer Bodoni. 

Ligatures
Ligatures occur as single glyphs composed of two letters. Common ligatures are fi and ffi due to their kerning. A secret ligature, the ampersand (&)! The ampersand is a ligature of E and T (from the latin word "et" which means "and").  They arose from kerning issues with printing presses and remain as stylistic choices in modern typography. 

Bauer Bodoni does not have ligatures, but Mrs. Eaves has some pretty nifty ones.

This, not that
The foot mark is this ', the apostrophe is ’. The little curly tail makes all the difference. 
The inch mark is this ", the quotes are like this “ ”. Smart quotes flip at the beginning and end of a quote and also have the cute little curly tail.
The hyphen, en dash, and em dash are listed here from shortest to longest. The hyphen (-) connects words, such as an independent married woman's last name (Townsend-Gosling) or in a hyphenated paragraph. The en dash (–) is typically used to signify a range (1900–1956).  Em dashes (—) are utilized for breaks in a sentence—like right here.

P3:1

Bauer Bodoni

Bauer Bodoni is a modern serif font (Didone) created by Heinrich Jost for the Bauer Type Foundry in 1926 in Munich, Germany. He designed Beton, Atrax, and Fraktur. He created several versions: black, bold, italic, condensed, Roman, small caps, and oldstyle, and several combinations of these. 

Old Style fonts are fonts such as Bembo, ITC Legacy Serif, and Sabon Next. They're classified by "
curved strokes whose axis inclines to the left, and little contrast between thick and thins" (Fonts.com).

Transitional fonts such as Baskerville, ITC Zapf International, New Caledonia take influence from Old Style but also make them different, removing themselves from the calligraphic style of Old Style.

Modern fonts such as Bodoni, Didot, and Bauer Bodoni branch from the Transitional to complete the progression. They consist of high contrast strokes, strong vertical axes, and horizontal stress.

Slab Serifs (aka Egyptian) are serif fonts with strong square serifs such as Serifa, Rockwell, and Courier.

Sans serifs are fonts such as this one that do not have serifs (the tails on letter terminals). They may be geometric like futura and century gothic or more humanist like aksidenz grotesque. This classification comes from how straight and clean the lines are or how perfectly circular the round bits are. More "perfect" means geometric, less means humanist.

Stroke weight refers to the width of the lines that make up the letter. Heavy weight fonts have wider lines, lighter weight have thinner lines.

Axis refers the the vertical guide on a font. Basically imagine if you were to draw a line bisecting the letter, and the angle of it in regards to the baseline is the axis. The stress is how the strokes transition to varying weights on a certain axis.

Small caps is a member of a font's family that is in all caps, but letters that would actually be capital are slightly larger than the other letters. Lining figures are characters that stay in line with the X-height, while non-aligning figures stagger up and down along the x-height, typically used to make numbers less noticeable. Ligatures are figures that combine two letters that share one side so they serve as one whole character.

Type measurement is the standardization of type size based on picas and points. A font measurement number (12 pt, 18 pt, etc.) is based on points. There are 12 pts in a pica and 6 pica in an inch. This standardization allows for more unified systems in regards to using multiple fonts, and it also allows typographers to use these standards to make their font appear bigger or smaller on the baseline.

p2: FINAL

p2:6

More thoughts...

The method of my madness is starting to come into question. I've made too many simple demonstrations of my typeface in use but not enough explanation. Another obstacle remains finding a good picture that's high-res enough to look good at the final size. I love this picture but it just prints too grainy.

p2: 5

My teeny tiny first draft

p2:4

SAILOR

I finally nailed it down. If you'll notice between my last post and now, I've made FontStruct bend to my will. I really want my dear reader to understand the severe anguish this program has put me through. Really almost to the
point of questioning my enrollment in any method of formal education. Still, I emerged the victor (I think). I heavily modified the M, Z (which was backwards, that's embarrassing), N, and W. I also added figures to the family.

BONUS JONAS: Gotham

Gotham is a font created in 2000 by Tobias Frere-Jones. It became more widely notable when it was adopted for Obama's campaign. In addition, the University Daily Kansan uses Gotham as its' headline font, which may make my decision biased. 

p2:3

Sailor

Tattoo font is a heavy inspiration as well as old Western aesthetic. My keywords are gritty, tough, and polished. I dig the tough-guy vibe each of these inspiration fonts gives off. It's the more challenging of my two fonts, but the aesthetic feels more original and it appeals to me more than my second one...

Mr. Roboto

Mr. Roboto is influenced by cartoonish far-future aesthetics, such as the Jetsons. What might type look like on all of our mechanical robotic screens? I think it would look like Mr. Roboto. My key words for this one are definitely futuristic, square, and quirky. 

p2: 2

Digital

My first typeface is a foray into digital replica. It is heavily inspired by vintage video games, 8-bit arcade style, and minimalistic retro digital typefaces before beautiful design was standard among home computers. Keywords: digital, analog, 8-bit, square

Futuristic

My next typeface was inspired by futuristic-looking type. My Life as a Teenage Robot kind of embodies the aesthetic I was going for. It's futuristic but heavily stylized to the point where it could also be used to portray a retro vibe. Keywords: curved, narrow, futuristic

Calligraphic

My next attempt was inspired by the New York Times font, with varying stroke widths mimicking calligraphy. Calligraphy is characterized by it's alternating of thick and thin strokes. One method of calligraphy is making thick downward strokes and thin upward strokes. There are no hand strokes in typeface creation so I tried to mimic it with the stupid thick bricks in fontstruct and it did not really come across at this point in my remedial understanding of this program. 

Keywords: calligraphic, angular, bold

 Tattoo
Tattoo font is very interesting to me as it has elements of handwriting yet it still has a unified style over the hundreds of thousands of artists who have used lettering in their tattoos. I tried to mimic the traditional Sailor Jerry tattoo typeface but in a more polished manner.
Keywords: Tattoo, caligraphic, hand-drawn, serif

Hazard

This font was my "fun" font, where I tried to make an unconventional method come across as legible. Not super successful. With some refinement I believe I could improve upon it but the program makes it difficult and demands a high level of detail to create a legible font. Regardless, it was inspired by caution tape. It shows how negative space can create a legible letter form just like positive space can.

Keywords: negative space, caution, bold