Monotype Corsiva

October 15, 2015November 13, 2015 Francesca Hannah Veal Project One, Research History of type, Project One, Research, typography

The type I want my work to look most similar too is Monotype Corsiva.

According to the website fonts.com, the font was created by Patricia Saunders. The inspiration for this font was started very early on in the history of type design, the elaborate swashbuckling letter forms of early type were a quality incorporated into monotype corsiva. Corsiva was heavily influenced by the work of Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi, an italian scribe. Arrighi’s contribution to typography in Rome was huge in the Renaissance period, resulting in modern typographers emulating his work. In the twentieth century, Monotype Corporation commissioned the typographer Patricia Saunders (also known for her work on the Arial font) to produce a typeface suitable for formal purposes. Monotype Corsiva was born and released in 1995.

Thuy Mat Tit

October 14, 2015November 13, 2015 Francesca Hannah Veal Project One, Research Project One, Research, typographer

I discovered a typographer called Thuy Mat Tit and immediately fell in love with his work!

This first project is called “Whispered Garden Alphabets” and failing to find much information about Thuy, I’m just going to talk about what I like most about this type. Firstly, the tiny detail of each design I find fascinating, and I could literally spend hours looking at each individual design in each letter. Furthermore, the strong san-serif structure of the type contrasted with the elegance of the “nature” design works really well together.

The second piece of work of his I love is called “Be Brave”. I actually found a quote he made when creating them: “In my life, sometimes I really need to be encouraged that: ” Be brave, honey”. So I made this typography to cheer myself and everyone who need to be. BE BRAVE and everything gonna be fine.”

I LOVE this quote. Inspirational. The type? Gorgeous! The ribbon like swirls and flamboyant curves and folds look so elegant yet so effective.

Typography Sculptures

October 14, 2015November 13, 2015 Francesca Hannah Veal Project One, Research ideas, planning, Project One, Research

Now I have my initial idea in my head; creating a sculpture of letters made out of a strong metallic material but with an aim to create elegance out of it by making a serif font; I can begin to research typographers who have tried to do similar things. My first port of call was to simply Google “typography sculptures” and an array of beautiful and interesting images were unravelling and I was clueless where to start. So I began with the ones I found most intriguing.

I discovered a website called Typostrate.com which is filled with articles on typography.

The one I particularly looked at was an article with images of type sculptures that artists have created. My favourite is the one in the image below;

The simplicity yet complication of the twists is so beautiful to look at and has made me think about twists I could create with my sculpture. The 3D aspect is something I want to incorporate into my work, and displayed on a wall for my final presentation of it as it shows the detail of the letters more clearly. The second aspect I have taken from this work is thinking about colours. I want to keep the metallic colour of the metal twists but also introduce another colour/item which represents the elegance of the font, perhaps a flower or wood and parts of a tree trunk with hidden green leaves in-between.

The Chic Type Blog

October 13, 2015November 13, 2015 Francesca Hannah Veal Development, Project One, Research planning, Project One, Research

I have discovered my new favourite place to get Type inspiration from, The Chic Type Blog. It is a blog created by a graphic designer and type enthusiast which includes different categories of type which she researched from other graphic typography designers. I absolutely love her blog and found lots of work I want to use as a starting point for my own type.

I love the serif fonts that have large swashs’ creating that elegant and relaxing look, just like these examples she has on her blog:

I then found this work by Joseph Alessio called Tooling Around. He formed each letter of the alphabet out of metal materials, however I noticed they were all San Serif fonts. This made me wonder if i could create a typeface made out of a strong metalic material that looks tough, but create an elegance about it using swashs’ on my typeface like the above fonts.

Arial Vs Helvetica

October 13, 2015November 13, 2015 Francesca Hannah Veal Project One, Research Fonts, Project One, Research

Whilst researching online I came across the website ilovetypography.com and discovered an interesting article about Arial and Helvetica. The article begins with detailed information about when the font was deigned and by whom.

The article then continues to unpick the features of each font. The writer points out the differences particularly in the letters “G” “Q” “R” and “1”.

After this i continued researching online and found a couple of YouTube videos which is found very interesting! The YouTube Channel “CollegeHumour” has created two videos, “FONT CONFERENCE” and “FONT FIGHT” in which each video the typefaces are personified into different characters. My favourite, the “FONT FIGHT”, is where Arial and Helvetica accuse each other of being copies and with their different teams of fonts behind them they battle it out. Comic sans making an appearance at the end being made out to be “useless”. The Second video “FONT CONFERENCE” has Times New Roman leading the show, with the bad guy as Randsom and Comic Sans saving the day!

I thought they were a great watch and something new and different that I have never seen before.