Alphabet soup 2 - Lewis font in Illustrator

To achieve a better crafted finish I have been working on the Lewis font in Illustrator.  The practise in Illustrator proved to strenghten my weaker skills.  This is a screen print of how I achieved this.

Alphabet soup 2 - Outline font

Following the final crit I tried the font just as an outline font without the blocked in areas which I think is reasonably successful. 

I went on to seek advice from Jo at this stage as I still was not completely happy with the final outcome.  She had some useful suggestions and the actions from this discussion are noted  on the actual sheet.  The main point was to set some rules to apply across the font (where possible).  This was something of a turning point as the work after this proved much stronger.  The rules I came up with for the font were:

LEWIS FONT RULES

1. A blocked in area either the arms or counter, if two one blocked line, one thin line.

2. One wide block on the stemmed letters, if two stems then one block, one thin. 

3. One thin line either cross bar,cross stroke   

4. Exceptions the O is one blocked line.

A Visual Vocabulary- letterform and communicating adjectives

The aim of todays visual language session was to communicate an adjective using purely one letterform.  The task was made more difficult as we were timed this resulted in an intuitive result.  We also had to guess what each other's adjectives were.  A lesson in how uniquely some of us think!

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We applied the same proces on groups over a larger scale.

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Digital Photography - presentation

www.elliedavies.co.uk

http://www.hamish-fulton.com/

Notes to presentation

Slide 2

Ellie Davies currently lives and works in London.  Like her use of light.

2008 MA Photography at London college of Communication

Exhibited home and abroad

She has recently been awarded 1^st Place in the Fine Art Landscape category of the 2010 PX3 Paris Photo Prize.  

She shoots digitally which is unusual for Fine Art photographers who tend to shoot using film.  

Solo exhibition called Smoke and Mirrors in April 2011 at 10GS in London

Slide3, 4,5

Bert Hardy

Born 1913 love real life shots taken over 0^th century.  Capturing moments Photographed d-day landings 1944

A documentary and press photographers most famous for his work in picture post

Slide 6

Gursky

German photographer b 1955 famous for huge architectural and landscape photos which are becoming increasingly abstract

Slide 7

Print on acrylic glass 99 Cent 1999 famous for being most expensive photo to be auctioned at Sotheby’s  $3.34Million

Slide 9

David Hockney b1937 in Bradford.  Most famous for his painting began photo collage on the 80’s.

Slide 11

Bigger Trees Recently used Digital photography to plan the scale using computer mosaic to help produce a massive painting of trees which he donated to the Tate Britain 15 ft by 40ft using 50 separate canvases

Slide 12

Hamish Fulton

No walk, no work!
London, conceptual artist, walking artist, as he loves to define himself, Hamish Fulton walks.

Born 1946

Studies at Goldsmiths and St Martins in late 60’s

Like the dramatic photos and website design

The following photographers stood out for me from the other students presentations:

Fay Godwin Landscape photgrapher

Sophy Rickett

Ola Kolehmainen  photgrapher born 1964 in Finland.  Interesting use of light, reflection and texture

 



Alphabet soup 2 - getting somewhere

I was reasonably happy with this verson of the A1 poster.  I just struggled to get the curves smooth especially on the 'J' and the 'Q'.  Drawing the A1 poster proved to be a challenge in terms of neatness as it was quite difficult to avoid smudging on the high quality tracing paper.  The layout of the letters also proved difficult and when I do this again I will pencil a grid in to use as a guide.

For the badge (size 90x45mm) when I tried to trace out Lewis's name smaller I found even using a fine liner that the small ink blots spoiled the line work.  On Thursday 14th we learnt some new trace and pen techniques in Illustrator which I found quite difficult to master.  I decide to try tracing the Modern font in Illustrator which proved quite succesful.

As I had run out of time to redraw the A1 poster I decided to submit the one above for the Final crit with a view to 'perfecting' the curves and the layout before the final submission in November.

The final crit and actions are described in my PPD blog.http://www.l-whitaker1013-ppd.blogspot.com/

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Alphabet soup 2 - Initial development

In Photoshop I trimmed the serifs off a tall, thin fonts called 'Eccentric'

 I also tried elongating Century in photoshop.

I was finally brave enough to take pen to paper.  As Lewis said he liked Helvetica and tall simple fonts I started simply trying to elongate Helvetica, Tahoma and Orator.  This drew a blank on the inspiration front so started trying to change a Serif font instead.  I chose Modern as it has quite long serifs which were useful to use as guides creating the 'blocks'.

The 'W' circled was really effective and I returned to this idea later. I had dismissed the concept at this stage as the 'S' would not work under the same 'widening' rule.

The design sheets I submitted at the progress crit are above.  The conclusion at the crit was as I stated the font was too 'art deco' and/or feminine.  The crit group agreed that the 'w' on the first sheet was effective so I went away to work on this idea for other letters.

I tried a variety of blocking/patterns to fill the letters.  I was also struggling with what to do with the 'S' so I researched quite a few fonts for inspiration. Braggadocio was quite useful as it is a 'blocky' font.   

On Monday although over the weekend I had decided to go with just the 'outline' font Fred encouraged me to extend my experimentation.  I tried changing the perspective of certain fonts, making the 'X' height higher and lower and also played about with blocking out different areas.

As Lewis is quite driven by money I decided to use monetary/numerical symbols.  I chose $,£,%,.,!,I also chose speech marks"" to represent his 'gift of the gab'