Print Room Workshop

We had a print room workshop, which was really cool, got shown how to do mono-prints, lino-prints and then wood-block type work. I went straight to the type, I've developed a fear for the lino-cutting tools from college. Along with that, I wasn't really that interested in the mono-prints, I never felt the outcomes where all that. Up there. Until I'm convinced otherwise I don't think I'm going to yet attempt it.

As I went straight for the wood-block, we were given two big boxes of assorted letters, seen above and two chest of shelves which were all sorted. Lovely. I created the word goose, below, using the assorted, didn't realise the E was actually a 9. Nevermind.

After we were done with the letters we then had to clean them all, the yellow was oil to get off the ink, then the blue was washing up liquid to then clean them. After that we were to put them back. I actually got some enjoyment out of this, it was pretty satisfying to clean the letters. 

I wanted to perfectly create a piece, one of the tutors (forget their names, I'm terrible) showed me that taping them together works really well so I choose to write out the shining because I thought it looked really similar to the letters in the sorted sets. I can't remember the typeface however. This worked out really well I admit, the ink comes off so nice, the aesthetic of them is amazing, the slightly off perfect non-digital lettering. Printed with wood. It's crazy.

I wanted to experiment some more, so I wrote out 'A Clockwork Orange', yeah bit of a Kubrick fan, anyway. This time using the serif sorted typefaces. Accidently used a hyphen instead of a full-stop. Didn't bother to change it instead moved onto a different title. To put ink on these we used rollers and ink we rollered on only but pushing, not push and pulling. This created a uneven coating, so only push, or only pull.

Alphabet Soup Typeface [ Daisy ]

For Daisy's typeface I was creating I wanted to utilize her hand-writing because I felt nothing really shows your personality and your traits like your handwriting does: neat or messy. It's part of you and I wanted it to be my platform to start from. I got Daisy to give me some samples of her handwriting  using two different pens she uses. They both showed the exact same form and mannerisms so I didn't feel it made a difference when I came to the actual creation of the letters.

To go along with her handwriting I wanted to pair it with a similar typeface that would emphasise it and make it feel as if though it had been created to be a typeface. I went with Futura to combine it with, the handwriting as well as the typeface futura both shared a lot of similar shapes and they were similar in their form. I then traced them all into my notebook and I went through them applying where I wanted to add and subtract to the letters or manipulate, shown by the coloured black parts in the pages. 

For the Y I combined the U and the J together, using the U as the top and the J on the stem down. I felt it created a really nice lowercase Y, I think this is the letter I was perhaps most happy with at his point. I created a list seen in the below page on what letters could be combined when it came to creating the letters to make the creation of each simple as possible and recycle the parts from the other letters in the typeface. I felt the Q was gonna be a problem at this point, but I wasn't sure how to solve it. Daisy had big flicks in her handwriting and I wanted to recreate this without losing the essence of the handwriting and also having it fit in with the rest of the typeface. On the J I combined the G along with it's L like stem to create the curl on the bottom like her in her handwriting.

In the below page I looked into how to successfully trying to pull of the Q, I didn't have a one I felt was  successful here though however, I carried on trying to think how to solve it from here as I didn't have any ideas for the page. I formed a really nice S, bringing it around like a 8 but separated at the cross section. I felt this was really quite powerful, wasn't sure it would have the same space as some of the other letters however in the typeface. 

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After I had a idea of where I was going with the typeface I then traced out the futura typeface onto tracing paper and applied the effects of the letters and manipulations I was wanting to do. The following pages are of me solving the hitches I came across in trying to get the letters just right.

One thing that was really bugging me when creating these was the M, N and H. But the outcome I got from that was really well worth it. I put flicks on to the bottom of the letters where Daisy had put in her flicks on her letters, the bottom right of each type-form I added a right angled leg. I made it to be a right angle so that I feels more of a typeface then an handwritten typeface. 

I had bit of a trouble getting these few letters right but I did get a solution eventually, the U, V, W were a probably because I didn't want them to look all too similar but in the end I added a flick onto the U, this seperated it from the rest of the letters, espesically the V which I was afraid it would look too similar too. I then applied the same effect to the W, this was for the same reasoning. Although the W is the same form roughly as the U,  I think it takes on it's own character and doesn't just feel like the U. The Z here I rounded it's corners, It wasn't much of a manipulation but it did feel a lot different to then it's previous form as Futura.

I wanted to try and see what it was like to subdue the kick on-top of the M and N, mainly because it irritated me that they went about the mid-line through the letters. I wanted to try and pull it back, seemed a bit over emphasised. Eventually I just left it as it was because it fitted and wasn't too distracting, more it added character. On the top arm of the K I tried to subtly add a little flick to the end of it like Daisy does so in her handwriting and have to say I quite like it.

In another attempt here seen on the M and the N, I was trying to lengthen them to fit in more and subdue the over emphasised kick up. I also here found a really nice solution to the spacing with the S, I decided to bring it perpendicular to the middle of it. I haven't seen an S like this before, I thought it was rather unique to it's self in that aspect, although a little from the handwriting, at this point I was beginning to develop on it's own accord away from that. 

Like the above image, here are my translations of the letters from the notebook I used in the first few images, the Y really works well and that was something I was happy with how it turned out. The Z didn't really take much more form but I feel it was pretty much getting there. As well as that, I had an attempt at generating the glyphs we were also required to do, I traced the glyphs I liked from futura and then work on them from Daisy's hand done glyphs on-top of that. I really liked the forms I got from the ampersand, as well as the the exclamation mark!

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I felt happy with where I was at with the drawn up rough versions, so taking from what I learnt in Simon's lessons I created two layers and had the scanned in versions of the letters down too 30% (he said 50%, but I felt more comfortable at 30%) from here I traced the first few letters to see how they turned out. I found out however I wasn't really too keen on the stroke of the letters. Felt too bulk, thick. Just generally not clicking with me, not feeling it. So I decided to have a little play manipulating it, looking back on the interval crit I deiced to decrease the stroke really far back. Pulling the letters to point 1 I got positive feelings for it so I decided that was the route I wanted to go with. Daisy's favourite tool to use was a fineliner. ( Taken from our questionnaire we did ). 

Doing just around the edges of the letters just didn't get the right feeling I was looking for, so instead of that I decided to go with through the exact centre of the letters, the forms I got from it were incredibly interesting. I felt I was onto something so I created the entire alphabet like this, tracing the middles out. It worked really nicely for the S I found, I did manipulate within reason to the original forms I had drawn but this was to make it fit in.

I setup my rulers so ever letter was perfect, where the arcs started and met I wanted to get perfect on each letter so they'd match up. For the flicks on the end I did the 90 degree angle again, I really loved how that turned out as well, it felt really modern and simple. I would say It does reflect Daisy in that aspect as well, it's one of her interests and It'd a reason I picked out futura as well. 

I was from this as well, tracing the middles, I was able to resolve the M. One letter I was increasingly getting frustrated with, I decided to use the extended M as a basis. From there it simply developed from slight tweaking, two images below the final one.

Another letter resolved been the U, I hated the perfectness of the U here, it didn't flow. It was more a shape then a letter and I got on my nerves because of it's lack of flow when I put it into a word. So I tried to force your eye to look left to right on it, arching one side to bring you straight to the right-hand side, although Daisy's handwriting isn't like this, it was for it's own good.

Below the final typeface, I'm rather proud off, especially seeing it laid out in full. It's away a way from futura, but it's also so for the handwriting a week ago. One thing is though, it's a representation of them now, it's got their subtle touches, the ones it's based off and it's that subtly to the letters that I really like about it, as well as the glyphs. 

After this we were also tasked with creating a label for our partner to wear during the crit

so I then arranged the letters for her first name as well as using the tittle from the I as the full-stop.

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Illustrator Workshop [2]

In this session with Simon he showed us some more advanced techniques that we could use in Abobe Illustrator and also talked about how you have to pay for fonts that are already on your computer if you want to use them commercially, which came as a shock. Anyway, the first tool he showed to us was the  width tool [shift+w], upon creating a line with the pen or pencil tool you can then use the width tool to increase it's size in any part your want, it's stroke rather and with that you can easily create dimension to your typefaces if you were tracing them out perhaps in illustrator. I also found it's quite a fun tool to use to illustrate with, roughly anyway.

As well as this he also showed us the different strokes you can apply to your letters such as the stroke and custom brushes. Also changing the type of tool creating the lines, angled for example. With the dashed line we were shown how to increment the dots, preset at 12pt. As well as this, the different caps and the corners which can be seen below and the effects of aligning the stroke along the paths drawn. 

Centre - Inside - Outside. [Alignment]

On top of that on how to manipulate existing letter forms using the create outlines option [ Shift + command + O ], this then turns your type into a vector shape you can adjust the anchor points off to manipulate how you want too. Examples below. On top of that then how to add anchors and add to a letter not just adjusting it's paths. Doing this we then added serifs, using rulers to be precise to a B and I in my own time do my little T here to just have a go with, onto a sans serif typeface.

Last of the tools shown was the blend tool, the specified steps and smooth colour, two very cool tools. With specified steps you can set however many steps it is to blend a square into a circle and vice versa, or just to create a stack of shapes all the same. It's really cool to play about with once you've transformed it as well as that. Now a tool I absolutely loved here Is the smooth colour, setting two different shapes as two colours then clicking their anchors makes them twist and turn into weird blob like forms which are also shaded from the colours they're transforming in from. The outputs from this look rather retro I have to say, almost like a lava lamp.

Illustrator Workshop [1]

We had a tutorial session with Simon where he gave us some pen tool exercises to do, I really enjoyed this, It was really cool to catch up on using the pen tool since I had during college and to learn about using the alt click on the anchor points, completely passed me over that bit when I came back to using the pen tool. Below is the completed pen tool excersise which was set up like a dot to dot.

With what we had done in this, we then had to trace over this G Simon had drawn out. Using the pathfinder tool to get the counters cut out so that when placed on-top of another item it would be visible through the counters, It was great to catch-up on this especially  the basics are often the parts I forget the most, especially when it comes to knowing what tools i have at my disposal and totally forgetting It's possible to do it.