OUGD403 (Brief 1) - Alphabet Soup: Visual Thinking

I was given the typeface 'Garamond' as a starting point for creating my own typeface.  I researched the history of the typeface and what it has been used for, as well as its connotations.

Garamond is an old style serif typeface, which has an authentic, professional look, as well as being smart and sophisticated.  Another connotation is old fashioned, which could be because of the serifs.

The word I got to inspire and help me to redesign Garamond is 'absent', so to begin I created a mind map of ideas related to this word.

The use of Garamond - Neutrogena

- a sophisticated brand
- well established
- higher class
- smart, professional brand design

Tuesday 8th Oct

Today, after learning about typography further, we worked in groups changing an existing letter from sans serif to serif, and vice versa.

We now know the terminology for each part of the letter design so this has been a huge help in preparing us to begin designing our own typeface this week.

I now a have a few different developments of the Garamond typeface and I'm looking into Alzheimer's and memory loss to inspire me further to come up with more ideas.

I have searched for images of parts of the brain that are affected in Alzheimer's and Dementia patients:

From these images we can see that patients with Alzheimer's disease have a reduced brain size, due to increasing numbers of dead brain cells.  The tangles and plaques in the neurons of an Alzheimer's patient look similar to wrinkles and could be shown in illustration as a connection between the old age and decreasing health of the brain cells from the disease.

Some imagery/ideas relating to loss of brain cells/memory:

I like the idea of the mind breaking away and slowly disappearing from the brain. In these illustrations it has been shown in form of another living thing (tree) and as cogs relating to cognitive functions of the mind. 

Friday 11th October - Interim Critique

Today we had our interim crit and although I took note of my constructive criticism I didn't feel as if I had anything i could try out much further.  I have decided to take away the brain structure design as it is too gimmicky and childlike to use as a font.  I still want to keep the sophisticated elegance of Garamond as I want to keep it related to the absence of the mind in elderly people due to dementia.

I will stick with the faded letterform design (shown as 'b') because my feedback included that it looks as if something should be there but it's not, and shows the transition of Alzheimer's disease slowly deteriorating the brain.  I also want to keep the half cut/removed letterform (shown as 'g').  My other two favourite letterform designs are my 'k', 'e' and 'w' so I will include these in my final 10 letterforms.

I intend to take the advice from my crit and look at the negative space around letterforms and the shadows they could cast.


Friday 18th October - Final Critique

One week on from my first crit, I finalised my 10 letterforms ready for constructive feedback at the end of the brief.  The general opinion of the group was that the abstract 'g' didn't work as well as the more minimal letterforms such as 'e', 'b', and 'w'.  

I have decided to go with the faded 'b' glyph as the basis for creating my whole typeface on Illustrator.  Advice given to me included keeping the letterform balanced when removing/fading out areas of the letters, and to keep the bottom part (or at least some of it) to maintain legibility.