Design Practice Blog: Studio Brief 2 - Visual Thinking

Brief Notes

Produce an alphabet based on one of the letterforms created from Studio Brief 1

No colour

Create an A2 poster in a 4 x 7 grid printed in digital resource

Scan the ten letterforms from Studio Brief 1

Deadline 7/11/13

I will be digitising this idea from Studio Brief 1, this is the equal stroke width typeface.

I will be adding aspects from another idea from Studio Brief 1, taking away the few decorations found in helvetica. Together they are both based on the same concept of form following function and as I mentioned in SB1 they can work together without compromising each other.

I also want to take inspiration, as well as contextualising my design for this brief from Herbert Bayer's universal typeface, keeping to the concept of sensibility and form following function.

Herbert Bayer's universal typeface merges the standard upper and lower cases, this idea of strict functionality is an extreme I would like to explore, the idea that upper case is unnecessary seems reasonable, we do not write in upper case and after researching into readability in my research for Studio Brief 1 I discovered lower case type is much easier and more efficient to read.

I appreciate the use of a circle as a starting point for each letterform as this creates a strong sense of unity within the typeface.

The idea of a universal typeface in itself is an interesting concept, imagining the world with just the use of one typeface is implausible however it was created to be used on all Bauhaus productions, this would create a great sense of a brand, a uniform recognisable distinctive aspect representing the values of the Bauhaus.

This typeface is stripped down to its most minimalist structure, form following function is my idea of sensibility and this is most definitely the best interpretation of the idea in my opinion.

I looked into the type used on medical packaging to inspire my design, medical packaging needs a sensible typeface due to its sensitive and important nature

Sans serif and bold type is recommended. Uppercase and lower case is also recommended however I want to take the mix of cases from Bayer's universal as this coincides with the form following function concept.

Helvetica is even recommended here.

Just as Bayer did with a circle, I am going to create functionality by forming all letterforms around an oval based on the c letterform of Helvetica.

Using the oval and a second overlapping oval I created a guide for all letterforms

Serifs are not used and the stroke width is equal through out, I wanted to keep the main characteristics of Helvetica within the design; such as the adjacent horizontal endings of the finial of a 'e'.

The horizontal finial is adjacent to the baseline.

The 'K' I created was stylised from Helvetica and not the same principle as Bayer used to create his as I believe the 'k' in his universal is too decorative and would fit with my other letterforms

The terminal for letterforms with terminals is created using a quarter of the oval grid.

For letterforms without a circular element, I simply added the characteristics of my typeface to Helvetica. I used a lower case 'y' as Bayer did so the descender creates a stronger distinction between other letterforms.

This use of a grid resulted in a uniformed typeface with strict functionality in consideration, there is no decoration on any letterform, the 'a' was definitely the hardest letterform to create as the infamous Helvetica 'a' contains a flourish in the counter, however taking this away creates a letterform that does not fit with the rest of the typeface. Bayer evens disrupts the use of his circle grid to create the a in his universal typeface, I didn't want to disrupt my type in any manner so I constructed my 'a' using the same principles as the rest of the typeface, using an oval and a stem that stops halfway up the x height and therefore, the middle of the oval guide.