Studio Brief 2 - Typeface part 4 (initial ideas and secondary crit)

I was unsure as to where to start with my initial ideas so I began with rationale 1 - to use Times to create my typeface. I based it on some advice from my last peer crit but didn't like the direction it was heading in so I opted to use my second rationale instead.

I decided to change to uppercase as I felt it represented my adjective 'grand' better than lowercase. This was also echoed by the advice in my crit - people had advised to use lowercase in Times, but uppercase in Helvetica. I experimented with various ideas on interesting letters, as a sort of sketch dump. I varied stroke width and style, cap height, serif and sans serif as well as decorative type.

I developed an initial idea on from these experiments and applied it to the entire alphabet.

The decorative style of the typeface was one I didn't feel could carry on further so I began again, experimenting with an uppercase 'D', again in Helvetica. I used this letter in particular to provide a sort of comparison point to my initial sketches using the typeface Times. 

 My ideas evolved from creating a body text and altering stroke and bowl width into more of a decorative route. I experimented further with this style, keeping the wider bowl and playing in particular with the stem of the D. Looking at all my ideas, I liked the top right D especially, as I felt the addition of serifs on to the fragmented stem and the decorative elements on the left of the glyph reflected grand well, echoing a regal and bold style.

I mentioned in my crit presentation that I had looked at the website 'Typesetting', a collection of type in Leeds, photographed and added into an online gallery. Looking at this type I was inspired along with help from a tutor to place my typeface - one representing class and grandeur - onto everyday, mundane objects. For example, bins, or drain covers - if any type is ever seen on these things, is always a basic font to echo the mundaneness of the objects. By placing a grand typeface on these and other objects it would be an interesting juxtaposition and something unique to consider.

Branching from this idea, I could look at material to make my physical typeface - paper, vinyl cutting etc. and even look at colour theory too.