Studio Brief 2: Interim group crit

The crit today required our initial developments to be pinned up on the wall, so that everyone could easily see our work and what we had done well and needed to improve on. I felt as though I had began to explore the ways in which unorthodox could be illustrated. It became very clear that all of my work would be improved on the whole with a lot more broader research. The research needs to focus not only typefaces, but also some scientific research on the most important parts of the letters and how we read a passage of text and which bits are needed or not needed.

I had started to look at the removal of serifs, taking away the traditional element of the Baskerville typeface; focusing on the meaning of unorthodox. This then lead to the removal of different parts of the letters, but in an uncommon pattern.

I then looked at removing all serifs and adding unbracketed slab serifs in an inconsistent way onto each letter. This worked well at taking away the traditional aspect of the typeface, but it didn't stand out as the most visually interesting way of illustrating unorthodox.

The alphabet made of shapes from the negative spaces within the letters stood out as being the strongest idea and most interesting way of representing the adjective 'unorthodox'. The lowercase alphabet had been thought to have worked better as it represented each letter fairly clearly. The uppercase alphabet had some letters that had worked, but it still needs more development so that the best solution can be found. I was told to look into research on the parts of letters that are needed for a person to recognise it. If I know this, then i'll be able to focus the shaping on these elements and not waste time with the sections that aren't as important.

It was also suggested that I could completely change the idea of serifs being traditional by adding them to the shapes in relevant places to help with the legibility of the typeface. I liked this idea and I would like to look into way of making this successful.

Before the crit I had decided that I was designing for it to be a display typeface with the thought that it would be suitable for alternative art events, music events etc. The group crit allowed me to focus my typeface design to creative events in general and with thins in mind, I think that the slightly abstract way of representing letters will work effectively.