OUGD403: Studio brief 2 - Typeface Design (Finalising Typeface Design)

After my recent feedback I decided that designs 1 and 2 were the strongest of the 6 and so I looked into how I could take these further and ultimately narrow it down to one typeface design. Some of the points that had been mentioned in the feedback session made me realise how an uppercase typeface would contradict this idea of a small, frail and nervous person as the letterforms of a typical uppercase sans serif font are bold and strong.

So to rectify my typeface flaw I changed the two chosen designs and redid them but this time within lowercase. The change made a massive difference in terms of creating more of a feeble looking typeface as it took away from the stable, solid feel that uppercase letterforms have.

After much debating with myself upon which design to go forward with I asked several people within my class, and the majority vote went to the second design simply because of how this instantly gives the impression of a nervously wrecked person. Not only that but how it appears as though a nervous person has maybe written the letters with how each letter form seems distressed and not all there in the same way the persons thoughts would be.

But even after all the adjustments I still didn't feel like this typeface portrayed the adjective nervous as well as it could do simply because of how it still feels like tall, stand alone font which is not how a nervous person would stand.

The image above is an exact representation of how I perceive a person to feel when in nervous situation, as everything appears to loom over you and the situation more often than not, feels worse than what it actually is.

This is another idea I wanted to implement into my typeface by altering the letterforms to take form of this small, overshadowed figure.

Original Typeface

Typeface w/ First Adjustments

Typeface w/ Second Adjustments

I made alterations to the each of the letterform to enhance this idea of them representing a nervous person's structure. Not only did I shrink the x-height but I also curled in the extending stems of the letters, reason being is that a nervous person would more often than not keep their limbs as close by their side as possible, making them appear much less confident.