Personal Alphabet Ideas Development

After doing some research yesterday, I started to begin to have a clearer idea of how to explore the challenge of creating this typeface, and decided that I wanted to focus more on the old school tattoo and urban words that I had selected in the workshop. Below are some of the initial developments. 

I really love the style of typeface used in the old school era of tattoo design, as the base of it is relatively simple, with small adornments such as the serifs which create something more interesting and iconic. 

However, Ste isn't solely interested in this arena, so to create the type around this style only would be unwise. What I'd like to develop and adapt with a new font is some of the elements of this font, such as the serif details and the shading. 

I then went onto developing some fonts based on the ones used on the album covers of Hip Hop artists such as Tupac, Ice Cube and Jay Z. Jay Z's font was the most interesting to me, as the style is quite contemporary but with a classic edge, and it also retains an element of urban style about with the width which adds to it's grandure, presenting something that is confident. 

After exploring the two styles, I set about combining them and creating a font that used elements of both. Obviously some have been more successful than others, and my favourites are the trio of As that have an identical structure but use different decorations in the centre, 

For me, the structure of this A, which I based on the font used on Jay Z's album 'Blueprint',  combines well with the elements taken from the old school tattoo designs. I think the strongest ones are the two that I have shaded.

I feel like there is a simplicity to the last 2 that fits with the simplicity that Ste likes, whilst also making use of the elements of graphics and style that interest him. I am unsure which would look better in a collective presentation, but on asking some of my peers, they said they liked the fully shaded one better, as it recreates the shading on tattoos. 

I personally like the partially shaded one because I feel like it communicates the idea of the tattoo typeface more clearly. 

For now, I'm going to test out both of these fonts with a few more letters, to begin to see which works best as a group.