OUGD403: Studio brief 2 - Typeface Design (Further Research & Initial Ideas)

In response to my feedback from the last critique session I had a further look into nervous situations and how these make people act. Ultimately the reason why, more often than not, people feel nervous is due to a few core reasons. This includes: 

• That they'll annoy the person they may be speaking to
• That they'll make a mistake and in turn embarrass themselves
• That they may be singled out for a particular reason
• That they could be rejected
• That other people may judge them

As previously stated in my first blog, the whole reason why people feel nervous is down to their environment and the people within it. So an idea I had was to create a typeface that appeared as though it was being affected by the environment it was in, a few examples of what I mean as shown below.

My choice of font in which I will base my typeface upon will likely be a sans serif, this is down to the fact that serif typefaces have a robust feel to them with their serifs and slightly more impactful look, which is not how I imagine a nervous person to act. So to get my adjective across within the typeface I want to use a somewhat slim weighted sans serif font in the hope that this will represent a frail, nervous character well.

I chose to base my typeface upon Univers simply because, although it is very similar to Helvetica as far as letter forms go, there are some letters in particular that I prefer such as the letter G and Q and as a whole the typeface feels more spacious and less compact than Helvetica.

Comparison between G & Q

Initial Sketches using Univers

The first sketch was based upon the idea of a nervous person writing in a exam with very sketchy, jagged letter forms. As for the second sketch, I based this one upon a nervous person's disorientated thoughts but as physical letter forms. The third sketch is a representation of how I imagine a nervous person to physically look, shy, scrunched up & brittle.

The first sketch of these ideas was based upon the idea of someone sweating and panicking when in a nervous situation. The second sketch was based upon showing how someone's heart rate would be seen as when nervous. For the third and final sketch the idea behind this is to show how someone may feel in a nervous situation, jumpy and on the edge.

Feedback

• Good identification of eternal factors with the environment affecting the type.
• Some ideas are too bold, suggesting the opposite of nervous
• Maybe try lowercase instead of uppercase
• Possibly try small caps

From the critique, I got some very helpful feedback about some of my ideas. As a whole the group said that the strongest three ideas from the 6 are numbers 1,2 and 6 but with that were some suggested improvements. With ideas 2 and 6, the thick black lettering comes across as the opposite of negative evoking more of a positive vibe about the typeface. Also with idea 2, it isn't completely legible and could maybe do with some tweaking to make it more clear. Another thing that was suggested is to test out using small caps as they are much less bold feeling letter forms compared to regular uppercase.