Activity 1 – Research  (P1, P2, P3, M1)

This font is named Electronic. This is very unusual, yet affective font. It is made out of various electrical components and computer parts often found on the motherboard. This font can be very useful if used for a tech related  magazine, website etc. This is because it is made out of many components which are easily recognized within the tech community. Magazines like wired and sites linustechtips are likely to used this font. Although this font is very creative and shows the designer has thought outside the box, it can be very difficult read and recognize some of the letters can be difficult. The letters C, D, O, Q, X look very similar and would cause a lot of confusion if they were all in the same sentence.

This Font is named ‘Cereal’ and is made entirely out of Corn Flakes. Overall I think that this is a very good design and has been made both carefully and neatly. By looking at the finished result I can that the designer focused on making the characters very neat and consistent. This Font will likely appear on Cereal boxes, in the breakfast aisle of a supermarket or in the food area of a nursery as this font is very appealing to young children.
However this is not the most creative font in this blog and isn’t very original. It would have been very easy to make because cereals are a very obvious house hold item.

Neon lights are very common fonts which are typically found in trendy bars & restaurants. Other places like convenient stores and takeaways also use neon lights to display there open stores. Neon lights are very common but still a good example of creative fonts.

This is a brilliant example of creative alphabets. Obviously this has been made out of crayons but in a very creative way. The majority of people would just line up the crayons in there original form to make the shapes. This designer has cut up the crayons into different shapes and arranged them to make the shape of a D. There are many other framed letters with this design on Google Image search. The way it has the caption ‘Mrs Doorley’ shows me that it was made by a primary school teacher to display her name on the classroom door. I think that this is a very good use for this font because it looks very welcoming and is appealing to children. A font with this type of design could also be used in a children’s book or computer game.

This is font is very creative and every character is unique. Each letter shows different cooking equipment which is used in both industrial and home kitchens. Because this font is made out of different items some of the letters can be difficult to read. This is why I would not recommend using this font in paragraphs. This font will work very well as a heading or title. I’d imagine that this has been designed to be on a cover of a cook book.

This font design is very similar to they crayon font. It has been designed in a very unique way . It is very eye catching and easy to read. Like the crayon design it has not been put together in an obvious way. It has been put together by sharpening pencils to all different shapes and sizes. It is also very colourful so appealing t children but it still has a professional looking design.

I can see this font being on the cover of a children’s literacy book.

Steel Wool is a very good material to use to make a font. This is because it is a very unique material that can be moulded into any shape. It is a very cheap to buy and allows artists to make good and consistent characters.

This design is good because each character is easy to read and is very recognizable. The steel wool has also left a good shiny finish with unique rough edges.
This design is likely to be used in hardware magazines.

Using a group of people to create text is very creative and unique. Most letters involve two people working together to make its shape.  text like this often very noticeable and will bring a lot of attention. This is because it will take up a lot of outdoor space where people would notice.

Text like this may be used in a protest or political message. Because it big and uses up so much space people will notice that will get the point across. A birds eye  view picture can then be taken and shared to raise publicity.

This is one of my personal favorites on the blog. The font that I will create will be inspired by this. I have decided that I will to use wires.

I like this font because its design is very original, I can tell that a lot of effort has gone into making the letters a perfect shape because it is very neat and easy to read. The majorly of the copper within the wire is still covered up by the plastic, but the end has them clearly showing which is a nice design feature.

I think that this font will be useful in many different illustrations. Many tech related magazines / websites would be likely to use this font has a title or heading.

Activity 2 – Mood Board (P1, P2, M1)

In activity 2 we has to create a mood board on adobe’s illustrator. This mood board had to show examples of previous hand made fonts made by other graphic designers. It is also important to make these examples related to the theme of the font that I will choose to design. (Below is a screen shot of my moodpboard from illustrator). 

Activity 3 – Idea Development (P2, P3, M1, M2)

We are required to come up with 5 different ideas for our final design. We must create 5 visual ideas and photograph them. Once we have come up with 5 design we must choose one and explore its design options and make it into our final creative creative alphabet design.

Design 1 – Ribbons

This was my first design out of the five. I think that this is a good design because it has many different components to it. To make the ribbons stand out and become very eye catching I decided to place them onto a notice board. This also gives the design a very rustic and traditional feel. This helps make something appear home made / friendly yet professional. Because I designed this font on a noticeboard I had a lot of space to work  with so was able to make the font very big and readable. Because the ribbons are very thick they make the font very bold and readable.
Another advantage of using a notice board is that you can pin the ribbons to it and move the board around. This aloud me to get very good views and angles of the notice when taking pictures of it in the photo studio. The pins I choose to use are slim and chrome coloured. I think that this was a good choice because they don’t distract people from the font but still look very good in the corner of the letters.

Design 2 – News Paper

To make this font I cut out letters from a newspaper. I think that this is a good design because it is easy to make and can still be easily read. I also like the design because you can see type from the newspaper within the text.
This design has a very ‘press’ feel to it and will work will as title in a poster about
newspapers, magazines and the press.
However this font has not been used in my final two because it is a bit unoriginal and to easy to create.

Design 3 – Straws

This design is made entirely out of straws. They have been cut up to create the right size for each letter. Every letter contains at least 30 straws cut up into different lengths. Then placed them horizontally to make the shapes of the letters. I did it horizontally to make the design a bit more creative and outstanding. The more obvious way would be to line up the straws vertically to make the letters. Creating each letter horizontally with 30 straws makes the design much more creative and more impressive. To hold the letters in place, I put little bits of blue-tac underneath straw. This made the letters much stronger and aloud them to be moved around without falling apart. I designed each letter on a large sheet of white paper. I choose to use white as the background so the black straws would stand out and be easy to read.

Design 4 – Stones

I think that stones are a good idea for a home made font because they come in unique shapes and sizes which guarantees each letter will be different and originally. Another reason that a choose to do stones as my 4th design is that they are very easy to put into shape and good looking letters can be made from them very efficiently.
This design is made purely out of garden stones, they where placed on white paper and photographed individually. I choose to photograph them on white paper so they have a clear background and are easy to read. Although I think that this is a good design I have decided that I will not use this is on of my final designs because it is to easy to make and slightly unoriginal.

Design 5 – Cassette Tape

This is by far my favorite design of the five. As the picture shows this design is made of old-school Cassette Tapes which gives the font a very vintage feel to it. The letters are formed by the film inside the Cassette. To create this font I had to pull out part of the film and mold it into the shape of each letter and number.
I think this design is very unique and original as it has not been done by many other people (where as a lot of my other designs have). I think that this font will work well if used as a title on an old school / vintage poster or magazine.
Although I think it is a great font I don’t think that it can be used in everyday writing as it has be of a large size to read and properly appreciated. This is why it will look very good if used as a title.
I think that it will make a good title because it is very unique and eye catching. Because it stands out it is likely to attracted the attention and interest a reader thus making them more likely to look at the poster or magazine that it is placed on.

If I were to create this font again there are a few things that I would do differently:
If you look closely at each letter you’ll notice that the Cassette Tape is a slightly different place. This slightly ruins the design and makes it look less professional. To stop this from happening  I should have marked an area on the paper for tape to go subsequently ensuring that it would be in the same place on each photo.

Another issue that appears on some of the later images is that the text isn’t as neat an uniformed as the early ones. This is because as I went through the alphabet and numbers the tape began to weaken and became much harder to mold into shape. If I were to do this again I’d use several identical cassettes so i’ll have newer tape to work with on the later letters.

 

Final Two Hand Made Fonts:

Ribbons:

 

Cassette Tape:

Design Report:

Within this assignment, I was required to make an the full English alphabet and number out of different materials.
The first thing we I did within this unit was research other creative alphabets made by other graphic designers. I feel like this was an important part of the unit because it gave me lots of inspiration on what I might use to create my alphabet.
At the top of this blog there are 9 different designs which I found on the internet and have put into my research to inspire me. Some of my favourite designs were the ones with; Electrical Components, People and Crayons. To right of each of these pictures I wrote a detailed descriptions on why a have chosen them and what I think is good and bad about them.

After this I was also required to make a mood board on which included materials that i liked and would like to use in my alphabets. My original idea was to make my alphabet out of materials with darker colours. So the majority of the items in this moodboard contain dark colours.

After doing all of this research it was time to make some creative alphabets. The first one that I made was the one with ribbons and a noticeboard.I think that this turned out quite well and the finished result had a consistent layout which was easy to read. The letters on the bottom line are slightly smaller than the other ones as I started to run out of space. In the future I would be more careful with space and plan out where each letter will go.
In the end I came up with five different materials to make my alphabet. The two most successful was the ribbons design and the cassette tape design.

Creative fonts from magazines:
We were also required to look through several magazines and find creative fonts that may inspire us. I have taken pictures of these fonts and made a collage to show them in this blog.

The Majority of the work from this unit was done by hand and not computer made. For this reason I do not have screen shots of my progress. However on each of my hand made alphabets you can see how each letter and number was hand made individually and put then put together.