Given Word

My given word was Archchemic which means of supreme chemical power. I plan to explore the chemical aspect of Archchemic and potentially look at creating a logo for a skincare company. However I need to conduct research into the skincare market and the five fonts we've been given to work with before making my final decision. 

Kerndown

Kerning:

Grids:

There are many different types of grids, the Golden Ratio is based on the principle of dividing a line into two parts relating to each other at approximately 1:1.618. This represents the Greek number for phi and plays a significant role in geometry especially in construction of pentagrams and pentagons. When 360 degrees is divided by golden ratio the angle is 137.5 the pattern that's created by the angle is repeated throughout nature contributing to the belief that everything beautiful has the golden ration within it such as flowers. The Golden ratio can also be seen in work by Albrecht Dürer who attempted to define the perfect grid system for the construction of letters in his 1525 treatise Of the just shaping of Letters. It is also believed that the Apple logo can be divided into the grid system derived from the golden ration however this has been disproven by the designer Rob Janoff who claims to have not used the golden rule grid system when designing the logo. 

Kerning is the spacing between two letterforms. This is important as it can alter the way we look at a word, name or entire brand as the kerning within a word can alter the connotations we have with a certain word. Tracking is the space between letters within a piece of text which can be alter to make a piece of text more legible for the reader. 

Kerndown:

Within this task we had 60 seconds to alter the kerning between letterforms in order to reflect the impression given to a customer from a certain type of brand/company. Our first company was luxury cars (see figure 1) for which we used wide spacing which was influenced by other luxury brand such as Range Rover and Mercedes. We then looked at cheap food companies (see figure 2) for which we chose close spacing without baseline as has little technical design due to the budget nature of the company its intended to represent. Our third task was for a condom company (see figure 3) for which we chose even kerning in order to create safe and reliable impression on the audience so the brand looks trustworthy. Afterwards we created kerning for an indie band(see figure 4) which we had no baseline and no clear spacing in order to reflect chilled and relaxed theme of music. Lastly we looked at an IT company(see figure 5) for which we chose close spacing but not touching in order to represent strategic nature of company and the idea that IT connects people and systems together.  

Figure 4

Figure 2

Figure 1

Figure 3

Figure 5

Mini studio brief: Ligatures

Figure 1

Figure 3

Figure 2

Ligature is two or more letterforms joined together to create one symbol.

To aid my initial ideas I started with some basic research into existing ligature such as the ampersand which is derived from the latin translation for and-“et”. This then lead me to the idea to create a ligature for thank you by joining both the T of thank and the Y you together to for the ligature in figure 1. In order to create this final ligature I first experimented by sketching initial ideas and looking at how much of each letter you can remove in order to create a ligature whilst keeping it relevant to the message trying to be portrayed (see figure 2). I then decided to refine my more successful response digital to create a more clean cut sleek ligature as seen in our final design (see figure1). During this design process I also experiment by looking at the latin word/symbol for thank you and develop some ligature from this. Initially I sketch some ideas by looking at different ways to alter existing letterforms (see figure 3) which I developed further using illustrator in order to simplify and refine my initial sketches more to create the final outcomes shown in figure 1.

After receiving feedback I have found that the TY designs featured in figure 1 where more successful as they where more easily recognisable and would fit within the english language more successfully than the more abstract designs feature in figure 1 which are more complex and harder to understand. However the abstract designs in figure 1 where found to be more interesting, therefore they could be refined so they are more easily understood/recognised which would also allow the ligature to be transferred into different fonts for universal use more easily. In future I plan to do more research to form my initial ideas in order to be able to develop my ideas more easily whilst doing more experimentation as I feel I should off experimented with putting my ligature into different fonts/context to identify problems with my designs.