Design Progress

Today has been productive in terms of ideas and more of a development in my work, which is amazing because I was getting so stressed about starting over that I might have gone a bit insane over the weekend and spent all my wages on retail therapy.
Jo wanted me to look more at creating a new typeface, as opposed to just decorating a pre existing font, and she also wanted me to look at more elements of Ste's personality so that the typeface could be identifiable as him.

At first I began working with the idea of having a simple font placed inside a blackened silhouette of symbols relating to Ste, such as a car, music etc.

However, I feel like this has been done before, and it also doesn't fulfil the task of creating a new typeface, as it simply uses a pre existing one inside the illustrations. 

This was useful though, because it led me onto the idea of using illustrations to create the typeface. 

So I started looking at exploring what illustration I could use in the typeface, and I came up with a few things I thought summed Ste up well. Because of his love for Mark Machado and Tupac, tattoos and hip hop became the main focuses, as well as his most treasured item, the xbox 360 (typical boy), and I also looked at spray cans, because Mark Machado is also a street artist, and Ste is into urban art. Driving is also featured because most of his answers came back to his car, and he spent a HUGE sum of money on it.

In exploring the anatomy of type, I started to look at elements which could be repeated in the alphabet, such as the bridges. I also decided to keep the structure of the typeface simple so that the viewer could still find the alphabet legible. 

At the moment, it's a very rough idea of how everything is going to look, and for some they need more development, mainly because I began to struggle to form new ideas, and I also struggled to make sure the alphabet didn't appear too repetitive, so that letters would work together without looking too samey. 

The letters I'm most happy with at the moment are the first 8, as I feel like they follow the same structure but all look unique, whilst representing Ste quite well. The other letters need some work, such as the S, the O and the J. I also still need to work on the glyphs, which I'll develop more after the alphabet is closer to completion. 

I am happy I've managed to come up with a better idea, that seems to look more resolved and relates more closely to the task we were given.