Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

The text source I chose as inspiration for my typeface is book series I read as a child called the “Spiderwick Chronicles” by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. This is a fictional story line that fallows three siblings through a series of events dealing with mystical beings good and bad. The books are fairly eerie and have a dark feeling to them while still being a book for a young crowd. I want to use this book because I want my typeface to be made out of fallen tree branches which especially paired with this time of year have a creepy and eerie feeling to them. Although the text is based on something material I would prefer to just use it as inspiration and actually used illustrator to create this typeface. I want to do this because I don’t think it will turn out well if I have to scan in sticks and twigs, and in illustrator I can make vector images that are easily editable. The rules I want to use for the typeface are along the line of creating six to eight different “branches” that I will craft my alphabet out of, combining them in different way to create each letter. Another rule I would like to fallow is have it look like the branches are tied together instead of just laid over each other. I also want to have each letter have some sort of fork in a branch that is easy to see, kind of representing a serif. Like I said earlier I would like to use illustrator for this project because I think it would be the best platform to create the design and feel I want to with my typeface. I sketched a few letters that are along the lines of what I want to do and have different aspects and variations to them that I could expand on once I finalize which one I want to make my entire typeface out of.

Sketch of Typeface

Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 PS4 Cover. Bandai Namco.

My inspiration for the text I am trying to write comes from a video game cover that I own. The game is Naruto Shippuden ultimate ninja storm 4. The word that is more visible Storm has the type of font I want to use. The way they wrote the word works so well with the title of the game. The reason that I am choosing this text is because it’s one of my favorite fighting game I own. I personally don’t enjoy playing fighting games but this one is a different because it’s based on an anime I watch and enjoyed. I play this with my brother when it first came out to see who is the better player in fighting game which is more likely to be him, I’m not good at these types of games but that didn’t mean that I didn’t enjoyed playing it. I don’t play as much as when it came out but when I do play it it’s still enjoyable. The text itself makes me hyped to play. It will make other feel like the game is action packed which it is.

I plan to do a modular type design because I wasn’t too sure what to pick for a material for the material based design. Another reason is that I will feel like I accomplished slightly more if I do it myself. So, my type will be all caps so I need to set a cap size so all letters look the same in height. I will be doing san-serif, thick strokes, simple design. I will be using a graph paper or a blank sheet paper to do a rough sketch first then transfer it to either Photoshop or illustrator, maybe both. I will use the scanner I have here at home to transfer a better quality of the rough sketches into my computer. Because I’m doing modular I don’t really to use a high-quality scanner to scan. Illustrator will be used to change the scan image into vector graphics for cleaner lines. Photoshop will be used for the poster part of the project.    

This is a poem called “Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou. I got this picture off of a blog site called Babylon Sisters which was posted on May 28, 2014. There’s many designs that are used to display this poem and this one looked the best to me.

The text that I will utilize is a poem called “Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou. This poem emphasizes on women empowerment and the beauty of women all around. This poem is intended to lift up the spirits of women and remind them that they’re phenomenal. It sends a message to women that confidence is key, especially in your own skin. Regardless of the societal norms of people having this “figure” that is determined beautiful or sexy, it’s the internal belief that woman are phenomenal no matter the shape, size, or skin color. When this is acknowledged, you’ll be more joyful and confident. This can also relate to men as they go through the social norms of what’s masculine and what’s not. It’s okay to show emotion and I think that’s important because a lot of anger is built up within themselves and they’re unable feel free. This poem makes me feel good because it’s something that was reintroduced to me last year. This poem helped me overcome a lot of obstacles in which made me an even more stronger and confident woman than I was before. Obviously people are going to feel how they want to feel when they read this poem. But my goal is to make people feel free, joyful and of course phenomenal when they see my final design.

This is part of the “Phenomenal Woman” poem by Maya Angelou designed by J Clemant Wall on April 10, 2015. I’m not really focused on this exact part of this poem but the design itself (which is shown above).

I had a hard time trying to figure out if I wanted to do a modular or materials-based design. The problem with doing a modular design is that I’m constricted to a certain limit. Whereas with a materials-based design I’m able to be more creative and explore with a lot more options. It wouldn’t make sense for me to use a poem that emphasizes on the fact that it’s okay to be different. Or that my goal is to make people feel free when looking at my design while everything looks the same (in which translates to that societal norm I was talking about earlier). I’m for sure on the materials-based design as of right now. I’m still deciding on a couple of designs and I’m also deciding if I should draw out my letters and transfer them into illustrator or form my letters a different way. I don’t have that much experience using illustrator so this will be interesting to see how things turn out. Since I haven’t quite figured out my design yet, I can’t really say what technological aspects I would be using or what’s appropriate for my process of creating this design.

On the spirit of Halloween, I wanted to organize my alphabet to fit the mood of the creepy and spooky season that is October.  I took classic poetry that focuses on the supernatural such as The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, and other types of poetry geared towards the macabre.

Taking this inspiration from The Raven, I wanted to shape my alphabets from feathers, raven feathers to be specific.  The poetry is a dark and ominous in nature and I wanted my alphabet to have the same effect.  Not particularity groom and grim, but the emotion it should extrude should be macabre and dark.   The design of the typeface will be material-based font, where the feathers will make the letters of the alphabet.

I will design this font by using one feather of the same size, width, and length to create a consistency throughout my typeface.  The opacity should also be altered in some way so certain elements are not being blocked off by being laid on top of each other.  The color of the raven feather fits perfectly with the standard color of typeface- black.  The intensity of contrast in the details of the feather will take some time to be played around to achieve my end goal.

I will be primarily using illustrator to design and organize my design.  However, previously working with stencils, it would be interesting to see the pattern be created on hand, rather than digitally.  The problem with this method would be manipulating the feather around and creating the template for the stencil altogether.

For my font project, I wanted to incorporate textures and colors into a more basic block letter font. I plan on creating outlines for all the letters in an uppercase simple design, similar to the Arial bold font when it is enlarged. This is going to be a modular based font because of the use of magazine paper I plan on using. I then want to create a collage to layer behind the cutouts of magazine articles and pictures. I was inspired by these magazine covers and thought the texture from the ripped paper created an interesting effect that would be cool for a font (both found on coverjunkie.com).

I like how raw it looks and I think it will be cool compared to the simple design of the outlined letters I am going to make. I think that using pages that have words on them will be interesting since the words will be on the letters. To make the letters I plan on having them all fit into a uniform rectangle size and I plan on making the width of the letters lines even as well. I am going to use the flatbed scanner to scan all the layered letters. I plan on using Photoshop to isolate the letters and clean up any edges. I feel the most confident doing this using Photoshop and the only way to get all the texture details clearly would be through scanning the letters. Most of this will be done by hand, I will have to make the collage and all the letters out of physical paper and art supplies.

This is the cover of the book Queery Leary Nonsense that was in the MASC

This is a page from Queery Leary Nonsense

For my Alphabet I have been inspired by three different things that I have noticed and would like to try and incorporate into my design. The first thing I was inspired by was the cover of Queery Leary Nonsense compiled by Lady Strachey that we saw in the MASC during our library visit. I really liked the curves of the lettering, I also liked the rounding of edge, which is also seen on another page where the font curves in a spiral.

This is a picture I took on the trails of Kamiak Butte that inspires me

When I saw all this is reminded me of trees and the way the branches can be really twisted and windy so I wanted to base my design off that. I also want this alphabet to have an eerie feel to it because I feel like that is the kind of mood that trees like this give off. That then led to me thinking about what kind of text excerpt I would choose and I instantly thought of a poetry book by Tim Burton called The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, because he is known for being eerie and dark with his illustrations and concepts, which is the category I could potentially see my typeface falling into. Although I am not sure which poem I specifically want to chose to use my alphabet with I know it will either be “The Pin Cushion Queen” or “Voodoo Girl”.

Overall, I want this too be inspired by the enviroment and have an organic and maybe even hand written look to it (which I will probably need to use the . My plan is to draw each letter out first on lined paper so that I can size it within two or three lines and everything can look somewhat uniform in size , which is a rule I want to set. Another rule for me is I want each letter to have a little ornament or serif, but not overbearing so that they all flow nicely together. For executing this project I plan to use Illustrator to create my typeface because I like the idea of this being a vector graphic, but I want to use Photoshop to create my print out so I might just use that.

Lately, I’ve been watching Doctor Who produced by BBC and my typeface inspiration text comes from a particularly poignant scene in season three, episode nine “The Family of Blood.”

“He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing–the fury of the Time Lord–and then we discovered why.  Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons, why he had run away from us and hidden. He was being kind. He wrapped my father in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star.  He tricked my mother into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy to be imprisoned there, forever. He still visits my sister, once a year, every year. I wonder if one day he might forgive her, but there she is. Can you see? He trapped her inside a mirror. Every mirror. If ever you look at your reflection and see something move behind you just for a second, that’s her. That’s always her. As for me, I was suspended in time and the Doctor put me to work standing over the fields of England, as their protector. We wanted to live forever.  So the Doctor made sure we did.”
(“The Family of Blood.”  Doctor Who. Writ. Paul Cornell. Dir. Charles Palmer. BBC. UK. June, 2007. DVD.)

I like this description of the Doctor because it shows the terror of a good person’s wrath.  This passage and the message here inspired me to use Doctor Who as the inspiration for my typeface design.

“He never raised his voice.” Drawn by me using BBC’s created cipher from Doctor Who called Gallifreyan

In the show the Doctor comes from a world called Gallifrey and they have a writing system that is based on circles and lines.  Gallifreyan is a cipher of the English alphabet and I love how this system forms words with circles and it makes me question why all text has to be written in straight lines and why our symbols are all so rectangular.

With these thoughts and ideas I plan to design a modular typeface that is not based on a traditional grid, but a polar grid.  This will force me to form letters with angled lines and circles. I believe a modular construction is the correct path based on my inspiration because modular designs capture that futuristic science fiction feel that I want, but because Doctor Who also shows a lot of history I want to include some token to handwritten elements by using portions of the lines on my polar grid to add serifs to my letters.  I will likely exclusively use Illustrator to develop my typeface because that is the program I am most comfortable with and it has a convenient line tool that draws polar grids.

To me, the most important part of my life, and the part that I draw the most inspiration from is my faith. Normally, I try to keep my faith and school work separate because it is a sensitive subject for most, but when thinking of a text that I wanted to serve as my inspiration, I couldn’t think of anything other than the words and truth that I am reminded of daily in the Bible. The Bible is a collection of accounts of Jesus’s life, and  according to wikipedia ranks first among literary works by number of languages and has been translated into at least 2,932 languages.

There are several moods conveyed throughout the bible, but the piece of scripture that I want to focus on for specific inspiration for this project is Psalm 86:11 – “Teach me your way Lord, so that I can walk in your truth.” This verse conveys a mood of encouragement, hope, and guidance.

Psalm 86:11 NIV

The verse makes me feel encouraged, and restored in my purpose of life which is to walk in the truth of our God.

Recently because of this piece of scripture, I have been processing what it means to be given free will by God to live life but also to walk in his path and listen to his plan. I have come to the conclusion that free will is a gift that God loves to bless us with. His plan for us can be explained in the visualization of a river – sometimes the river is really wide, and we can choose from hundreds of different paths that He has laid before us, and other times the river is really narrow and there is one clear path.

Using Psalm 86:11 as inspiration, I wanted to use the imagery of both a wide river and a narrow river.

Psalm 86:11 – Example of thick horizontal lines in each letter

The image on the left serves as part of my inspiration. It is an example of the verse in a cursive font. I liked it particularly for the this horizontal lines that define each letter.

I will use both thick solid lines, and a thin circular path in my alphabet design. So far, the rules I want to establish are as follows:

1. All horizontal lines (either on the right or left) will use a solid and narrow line – represents the narrow range of choices we sometimes have
2. All other parts of the letter will use widely staked lines in the shape of circles or half circles – represents the wide range of choices and free will that we are offered.
   1. letters that do not call for any curved lines will have thin straight lines for any part of the letter that isn’t horizontal.
3. When the center of the formed half circles of circles meet, there will be a filled circle or half circle – represents the truth of god that is found in following his path laid out for your life weather is it narrow of wide at the time.
4. Will represent a sans serif type.

I have chosen a modular Alphabet partially because I am personally drawn to clean sans serif fonts, and also because I wanted my letters to all be vector based graphics. I will be creating my alphabet using illustrator. I thought about drawing my alphabet and scanning them into illustrator, but I want to maintain a clean aesthetic, and I am pretty fluent in Illustrator, so I am confident that I will be able to achieve what I want to in the amount of time allotted.