OUGD403 (Studio Brief 2) Alphabet Soup: Illustrator

STUDIO BRIEF 2 - ALPHABET SOUP - ILLUSTRATOR

Brief

Produce an alphabet based on one of the letterforms you created from the Alphabet Soup, Visual Thinking brief. Once again you are restricted to working in black, however you may experiment with opacity and half tones.

Background / Considerations

Think visually. Consider what the visual essence of your subject matter is and how best to communicate it. How can these letterforms that you created be developed further now that you are working digitally? The following terms may prove useful: Trace, edit, layer, combine, outline, silhouette, positive/negative, contrast. Make mistakes in order to learn from them. For this workshop the emphasis is on investigation and experimentation. You will develop a quantity of material that will allow you to maximise your understanding of the applications potential within the time available.  One of the problems with software is that everyone has access to it but not everyone knows how to use it creatively. Abode illustrator is primarily used for the generation of vector-based images and as a type tool. When used as a means for visual investigation it offers the potential for rapid generation of visual variations. The possibilities of which can used as a springboard for further visual research.

Studio brief two asked us to develop the produce from studio brief one even further. We were asked to produce a complete alphabet taken from one of the chosen letter forms.

This above shows an example of what the 10 letterforms as they stand would look like when produced digitally on illustrator. As a set, they do not work very well considering each design is slightly different this typeface doesn't demonstrate a very readable font. To improve this, taking into consideration from the critique I will choose to develop the most successful of the letterforms to create the full alphabet.

I found that this letterform communicated my ideas well, however the simplistic design wasn't to overpowering to become a complete typeface.

I originally considered the idea of basing the typeface on a more simplistic design such as using the letter 'I' as my starting point, with the intentions of trying to make the letterforms symbolise a jigsaw puzzle.

To start off, using illustrator I began with the original typeface 'Times New Roman' then i started to remove the serifs. 

This letterform still looks legible now the serifs have been removed, once the serif was removed I also extended the stem of the letter so it reaches the baseline. It still represents the original typeface letterform however the new sans serif font is more clean cut and a modernist style. I will continue to manipulate each letterform by removing the serifs initially, then include the concept of my research once the letterforms are completed.