Project One

History of Western Typefaces

Francesca Hannah Veal Project One, Research , ,

When researching online I came about this large image showing a timeline of the history of western typefaces and the years they were created. I found this an interesting image to sit and look at as it puts in perspective how long each different type has been around for.

a-history-of-western-typefaces

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Its interesting to see how influential some of these typefaces have become, embedded into our lives everyday without a second thought about where they have come from and the time and precision it took to design them. Some typefaces are now used to represent huge conglomerate brands such as retailers and fastfood chains, some you see and immediately link to certain areas for example, the ‘Johnston’ typeface used in the underground image immediately relates to London.

Typography Introduction: “Anatomy of Type”

Francesca Hannah Veal Project One, Research , ,

Before beginning to think about my creation of my own typography, I felt I needed to learn the linguistic of type and understand the structure of how type works. I visited the site, http://www.typographydeconstructed.com/, and there took the time to read through the “Type Glossary” which, in detail, explains the different parts and sections to letters and their terms.

In the gallery below are a sample of some of the terms in which I studied.

Second Workshop

Francesca Hannah Veal Project One, Research , , ,

In our second workshop we started designing our own typefaces and learnt the hard way how difficult it is to draw a type! Choosing a font and writing a letter on a grid in Adobe Indesign, I began sketching and copying the letter by hand in my sketchbook. We did this by following an online guide: http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-basics-of-drawing-type-creating-your-own-handwritten-font–cms-23089 

By the end of my work I was very proud of my letter “F”, and decided I wanted to do a whole word, and try a serif font – up the game a little bit! This one, I definitely found more difficult, trying to make sure the correct parts were thicker and thinner, and each letter being the same distance apart.

Despite it being harder, I do much prefer the san serif font. I feel its just more interesting and appealing to look at. For my project I think I would like to create a type that is san serif.

Introduction to Typography

Francesca Hannah Veal Project One, Research , ,

For our first workshop we were given the task to roam around the streets of Lincoln to find interesting typography. Once collected we went back to the design lab and gathered our pictures together and created a grid of our images on Adobe InDesign. Below are the images I formed.

I found the exercise to be a good warm up into typography to get us thinking about the different types and fonts we are surrounded by in everyday life without taking much notice.