Found You Development

Overall I am pretty happy with how this project has come together, however there were still a few things that I didn't think were working interms of the layout and typography. I also felt there were some ways we could extend the project that we weren't fully exploiting.

I had a bit of a brainstorm, which you can see below. I thought it would bve a really good Idea to make a found you stamp, which we oreded from craftwise. We can stamp this on the envelopes when we send out the books. We also made some bespoke cards, so rather than just using one of the spreads from the book as a flyer, we actually put together a specially designed card, taking into consideration the stock it's printed on etc.

Finally a few of the layouts of the book have been changed, which makes it flow a bit better, overall I am happier with it and think it is a more copmplete project.

Fonts - Final Changes

Well I've spent some of today making the final set of changes to my typefaces. They are all fairly minor but I think it is really important to get all the details right in oder for the typeface to feel consistent.

I spent some time just typing out some common words with the typeface, to get a feel of which letters are and aren't working.

Above is the new R and the old R. I thinned out the bottom of the loop and made the decender come out at less of an angle.

I felt that in certain situations the spiky N was not working. I made one with flat ends. Its available in the uppercase N, which means that it can be used in certain situations.

The K was probably the weakest character in this typefaces, the top one is the original. The new one sits with the other characters much better.

Again I made a less distinctive E (Bottom) available as an alternate.

The only letter I changed in Grande Fete was the S making it less curvaceous and the 2 loops a similar size. Above you can see them both overlayed.

Grandes Fete

Well, today I also managed to input all the vectors from Illustrator into Fontlab for my second font provisionally called 'Grandes Fete'. Again it is the results of many revisions and re-workings and I think this attention to detail shows, I pretty happy with how it looks.

Once I had generated the font I did a few quick experiments in Illustrator to see how it looked.

Nord Express

Well I finished putting my second typeface into fontlab today. Its going to be called Nord Express. I spent a lot of time tweaking and finalising the letters and I think its paid off, I pretty happy with how it looks. I even went back a couple of times and adjusted individual letters once I had put it into font lab.

Final set of vectors in Illustrator. Above letters like the A and the H you can see some of the variations that were created before I settled on a final one.

Inputting the vectors to fontlab.

Above you can see the full set of characters in fontlab. Although it is only uppercase I put them into both the uppercase and lowercase characters so it easier to use. I also made some alternate characters available for the uppercase A and H.

Font ready to install

Some quick tests with the useable typeface in Illustrator.

Typeface Re-design

I redrew the typeface I designed making the lines a bit thicker and more consistant in general, I also made the letter spacing a bit better in Fontlab. I think it looks loads better and is a lot more useable.

With letters like the K below, where the terminals were at an angle like at the end on the kick, I made them horizontal. You can see the new version at the bottom. It makes the typeface feel a lot more consistent. I think its details like this that make the typeface more solid and useable.

Making my Typeface

Well yesterday I used Fontlab for the first time and made my very first typeable typeface.

The process isn't that difficult if you have already made your vectors in Illustrator. Its mainly a case of copying and pasting them into Font Lab. Its getting the letter spacing right that is really difficult.

Below my exported font ready to install!

It definitely makes it a lot easier to see how the font works when you can simply type it out rather than manipulating each letter individually.

In general I am pretty happy with the typeface. However I think I am going to re-draw it for a number of reason: 1. because it is too narrow, as you can see above it is very difficult to see at small point sizes. 2. Some of the characters also need tweaking and 3. I think I am only going totally develop an upper case version, because it is working much better and its better to make one case that works really well rather than upper and lower case that aren't quite right.

Bassment Corespondence

I emailed Alistair Kefford, who is organising the bassment clubnight in York, with the work we had done for him. He seems really happy with the designs. He probably won't be using them until after we graduate but it's good to know he likes them. Hopefully we'll be seeing Bassment posters all over York in the not too distant future.

Hey Angy,

Sorry for my slow reply. . First of all I really like them - they look subtle and they look well slick like weeny well good. Not 100 % sure about the colour scheme on the red and pale blue one, but i don't dislike it, be good to see it physically. Really like the plain black and white one, good and suave.

Beermats a wicked idea, be great to advertise next night on the beermats at current event. I like.

slightly worried about the script you've used to write bassment, not sure how easy it is to read the word, again be good to see hard copy.

Anyway its not what i was expecting but by jebus i like it. Not sure about sticking in photo, if you've got time try it and see. I think it might not gel with the overall slick neat design you've come up with.

Overall i'm really pleased with them Gus they look wicked. They're sharp. I'm guessing as well that they'd be quite versatile if i were to get anywhere with this and need variations on the theme ie. we could experiment with different colours/backgrounds while keeping the jagged circle motif.

Thanks Gus, really sweet work. Don't worry about doing any more work on this if you've got uni commitments, if i'm gagging for updates, or printing, or arrange some actual dates, i'll harass you.

Ali