Me: What will be helpful for me to get out of it is up until this point, a lot of my presentations about the project have been to the rest of my group, I’ve had discussions about the project with some other printers and some other typographers. But that was kind of before I’d done the actual sort of work, so to speak, that was more than the kind of research stage. So just some perspective on from your point both as a typographer, a graphic designer, and also an educator would be really helpful. So my project primarily revolves around the construction and recognitions of letterforms. And the creation of a set of tools to allow amateur typographers to explore the process of typeface creation. So at a certain point, right when I was writing my proposal, it more revolved around actually designing a complete typeface and going from start to finish marketing that. But I felt like the moment I started, I actually didn’t feel inspired by it, I done a lot of a lot of prep, actually, about how to create a typeface. So like learning about software, learning about how if I wanted to create a physically whether as so that I could print with your heart to actually create, like different letterpress blocks, and all that kind of research is no fun. And then actually, when I actually started designing the typeface, then sort of passion sort of got a little bit lost for me. And I realized that actually, the thing that I’m more interested about that project was a second year more about how we recognize letter forms and how we construct a letter form. So it’s more about creating a suite of tools for that middle part of a process for so when you kind of theorizing a design, how do you get, how do you fill in that middle part to then kind of get the end point. So I wrapped up the project in the name, old foundry. So that is the name of the actual I guess, what foundry organization, social media handle website where these tools were actually going to be hosted. You know, obviously, with the intent of foundry being in there, there’s a kind of a callback to lead across boundaries and natural kind of casting kind of production of type. And a lot of the design decisions within the kind of branding have been an attempt to have sort of one foot in historical one foot in kind of contemporary, which is kind of reflected in the the oval branded by itself. So as I said, as a starter guide design in my initial letter forms, I realized that the thing that interested me was really about what makes a letter a letter, what allows us to perceive one letter as being different from another, what allows us to actually perceive different letters within different typefaces, as being collected into those kind of different types of faces. So, this is a slide from the thinking with type book by Ellen Lupton that was used to help me identifying these kinds of different sets of components. So throughout the project had been trying to experiment with different methods of creating letter forms. So this has taken place in the physical space. So these are 3d printed letterpress blocks by resin that could be combined in various different combinations, exploring different layouts and amalgamations of them. And the benefits of using 3d printing to start the actual cleanup is quite minimal in comparison to originally looks at casting, laser cutting, but then obviously, you have to mount it up to type height, which has all its own difficulties, and the other was CNC routing. But in order to get access to all the different materials needed for that within the lockdown, that was a real difficulty. So this was just some initial experiments or kind of proof of concept as to whether 3d printing would work, which it did. They’re robust, they’re cleanable, the actual printing service surfaces, very good. So something that I I’m going to continue to explore kind of later on in the project. But also as I’ve been generating the letterforms be looking at different ways of constructing it. So this was seen on the left is a set of various different components that could then be recombined into different letterforms on the right with that Trying to first identify all the different combinations and different explorations of the shape on the left. And then seeing how those interactions between those shapes are kind of worked. I think some of these letters are more exciting and successful than the others. And what I kind of realized was the most successful letters were the ones that had that made use of more of a kind of order shapes, for instance, guy like this one, or the kind of skewed components, because they were what actually pushed it into being more recognizable as letter forms that were part of the typeface. Rather than kind of a series of logos, I think, or just a series of letter forms made out of triangles, which is what happens, I think, when you use some of the kind of more what kind of simpler shapes within that. So this next stage has been all about trying to refine the production and the creation of some of these letter forms. And taking these kind of root forms that I’ve identified as we occurring across multiple different letter shapes. And making like slight change them changing the width, changing the height, and then we combining them, or testing them by recombine them into these kind of different lead flows. Really not? Yeah, so this is still with the kind of thinking that I’m interested in. I think this slide shows, again, the more interesting parts are sometimes like, these smaller, almost kind of like signature, parts of it, you know, I think that’s what makes these forms interesting is actually this kind of smaller, more detailed component of it.
Sally Hope:I think, quite interesting, actually, when you do go through these exercises, and you have a set of component parts, and then you start playing with them. I think for me, that’s, that’s the most exciting thing, because then you start to get a real feel of how everything works together.
Me: I mean, it’s interesting you say about playing there, you know, that has you say another kind of late slide this, the whole project has been about trying to encourage play, to encourage some of that same fluidity that you can have with an idea when you’re kind of, let’s say, working in in letterpress, where you have a kind of set of immutable components. And you, they will say, Okay, here’s your 20 parts, you go to ours, just explore these, look how these shapes can be combined in different ways. can’t copy and paste, you can’t cheat, you can’t squish them, stretch them. But you know, there are your blocks. And what you get out the end of it are a kind of an honest exploration of those kind of components. So I said, I’m still, my, my proposal hasn’t locked me into an explicit amount of things to create. So I’m sort of experimented with lots of different forms at the moment. And as with the other one, I found that these kind of components almost like this kind of serifs seem to appear to me to be the more interesting parts of this so far, when you can combine them into these kind of shapes. And also with the idea that if I do end up creating these three, I guess I would call them typefaces, but they’re not really, if I call them font that at least is a correct term in that they could be digital fonts. But yeah, I see them very much more as components. But the idea is that they could be interrelate to each other that if the proportions are similar, if the sizes are similar than they could, you know, this one is from that very first slide. And this is from the second slide, so can combine in those kind of different elements together. So the end point of this will be the creation of website for our foundry, which is going to be as I said, a playground for letterform exploration. So likewise, I haven’t specified in my proposal, or I gave myself enough wiggle room not having been writing the proposal at Christmas, not really knowing how the next six months we’re going to kind of play out as to whether I would have any access to anything physical, or so, but I also realized, I mentally, I’m Myself needed something physical, as part of this project to keep me interested to keep me making things and keep me kind of getting in, to create. So the website, as itself got more kind of host the project and provided a suite of different tools for you to actually explore these different letterforms, and some of physical and some digital. So the digital tools build on something that I built in a previous module. So this was a very early on prototype for the odd foundry three website, which has a canvas on the left side, and then a set of sliders on the right. And by manipulating these sliders, you’re able to change and rearrange the position of the shapes. And you can also with the cursor draw straight onto this aiming to kind of create this immediate way for people to be able to actually interact with shapes, and also an immediate way for people to interact with these shapes with some of those kind of inbuilt limitations of physical tools. So looking back at the way that we create with depend the way that we create with, with with lead press one, we’re kind of exploring it with the frustration that sometimes digital tools don’t feel like they have any limitations. And thus, I think what ends up being created can be a little bit what can be harder to make decisions. And sometimes those limitations are actually really successful in narrowing down how we want to create another kind of forms that we want to create. So one of the digital tools will be redesigning this and integrating some of those, some of those letterforms, those kind of shapes that you’re seeing. So you would come to a page like this and be able to immediately start moving shapes around. The interface has got a recording feature. So if you press start recording, and you start moving the shapes around, when you’re finished, if you press stop recording, it exports, anything that you’ve done as kind of like a 10 second movie, so that can be something that can be put kind of straight on to Instagram.
Yeah, that’s really helpful, because you don’t really see that in these sort of typeface blogs Do you can sort of play and then that’s it all disappears again. So that’s actually really helpful, that’s really helpful. Likewise, he’s got the feature just to hit a keystroke, and it saves whatsoever on your canvas, as as a JPEG, as well. But the more more I’ve explored, it makes me realize that some of these forms, I’m creating suit, a digital toolset, and some of them suit a physical tool set. So there still will be a kind of component to that. Very early on, as I said, when I was really thinking about it, as laser focus has just been designing a specific typeface, it was very much more a commercial project. Whereas I think my desires are that it’s now more of a academic project where these tools are being created to actually help people you know, so with the, the kind of core pillars of it are that it should be exploratory and accessible. So the understanding that, you know, not everybody has access to a printing press that everybody has access to a 3d printer. So I will be selling printed blocks of those shapes for you to be able to be explored them, if you do have a press stamps, like a set of stamps, if you want to explore them that way, at almost the lowest end stencils, so that you can make use of them. And they can be used with gridded paper. So they’re all in the kind of same type sizes, you know, standard standardized sizes. So in the next week, my kind of aim is to finalize some of those forms that I’ve been making and actually kind of formally allocate them into different fonts. Yeah, I think I’m going to aim for probably about three different combinations of them or or three different variations of them. And then launch the website for about that, hopefully, the end end of June, and then spend kind of July, adding to it if I have more time to create another typeface or another font within that time. But I think more likely it’ll be about getting these tools out there and actually spending some time myself exploring them and encouraging other people to explore them. So that the kind of final part of the project and when I’m biting up the final report of it, I have some more kind of evaluation that I can do as the kind of like success of the project based on other people’s interactions with those components.
Feedback
Sally Hope: Wow. I just want to play with it.
Me:…now I’m getting very much into a niche for graphic design, and then even more of a niche typography within that to get kind of your opinion as to what what works, what doesn’t work? What excited you, what kind of forms succeeded?
Sally Hope: I really like the set of component parts that you had with the sort of swooshes and everything, that for me really resonated, because there I could see, I could see so much history being really discovered. The sort of mark the hand, the Circle Square Triangle type bauhaus stuff. So I thought it was beautiful. And then the sort of details where the sort of semi circular being cut out of a block as well, you know, I’d be excited if I saw those in the letterpress area, I’d be absolutely itching to get my hands on them. Because I think that I’m a sort of designer by discovery. When you’re looking at typefaces, especially for jobs, I spent hours just looking at those tiny details. But also the love of those details. So for some of those images, you know, just some of those forms where they were just printed really large. I just love to do that, because it’s that case of inking them up, putting on the press, peeling them back goes back to that sort of foundry. You founded your object to put it together, almost you found and found it.
I think it’d be something for students really to learn from, I also think designers to learn from as well because we do sit in this digital world now. I was always fascinated by the tactility of type, like you go into the letterpress you set it your hands on all over it. There is that sort of experimental element where on screen you’re setting and you’re like going yeah, no, yeah, but where you’ll probably be more experimental in the prep process when print making, you’re making very different discoveries.
Me: a lot of my research in one of the previous modules, like the digital media module, which is the one that really is kind of fed most into this with the creation of that kind of interface, was looking at the way that a tool relates to the marks that it makes. Early typefaces attempting to imitate handwritten forms, you know, hand carved forms, forms that were either made by chisel or made by, you know, kind of reeds. And about how frustrating working in a digital space can be because, as I said, like, there’s none of those limitations. The angles that are sort of made by using that in some of those tools are directly inspired by dip pen, calligraphic kind of typefaces. It’s interesting, you said about the Bauhaus because that’s what that very first 3d printed blocks were about. I need a proof of concept. I want to get into the print room tomorrow. If I’m just doing square circles and and triangles, the elementary forms, I’ve got myself a set of shapes that I don’t have to spend the time on the computer scrutinising. I can spend that time actually creating the blocks and then exploring them.I Found early on, as I think I mentioned, the things that I ended up making were just letter shape letter form shapes, almost using them as an outline in some places. And now the sort of next stage, the most exciting part of choosing a typeface, is kind of zoom in on those little details like zooming in on feature of the shape. For instance looking at Futura and the apex of the M, where it has those kind of lightning sharp points. And understanding that it’s those little quirks that make those typefaces interesting, and the kind of blocks that I am making, they need to have some of those oddities in a thing in order to then make the actual resulting forms interesting, and to actually make them make people push them. The aim has been to create these shapes that have hints of letters, shapes in them. But making sure that there’s still a gap there to be filled in by the design process, it’s why I’ve tried not to make just explicitly say here’s a circle. It’s trying to say, if there are going to be more circular forms, that would be like, probably a fifth of a circle, you know, so that in order to then fill it up, you then have to join it with another shape, so that people are less likely just to use one of those components kind of by itself.
Sally Hope: We did an excercise with students where they had to look up two different typefaces and go through the differences between them. And I’m thinking, oh, they’re gonna hate this, but they loved it. Because they started to look at the nuances of what these differences are. You’ve got all of these typefaces with what are are the finest differences between them all, and these differences matter so much.
There was a really gorgeous project. I’ll dig it out for you. This is an MA student in Holland deconstructed a typeface but she made this contraption out of wood with a pen in it. But what was fascinating was you put in coordinates, almost like a loom, and it created these different forms.
Me: I guess that is a really concrete explanation of the fact that there are recurring shapes, curves, angles recurring throughout the letters in a typeface
Sally Hope: You could have had a computer to do analysis, all of that, but because she’d made this beautiful thing. It had physicality, form. You can watch it, you can play with it, you can make stuff.
I think it’s a beautiful project mark, and I just really loved that first set of typefaces. A few things you might consider is the relationship between type and pattern. And so it’s almost deconstructed it becomes these shapes you can use as pattern. You could also look at not just the positive forms but also the negative forms. Have you looked at Alpha Blox
Me: Early on, Alpha Blox was a big inspiration in the project. But I feel like Alpha Blox always looks like Alpha Blox. It has such a rigid set of shapes. The many shapes are so simplified that it’s actually quite hard to create more elegant, different forms. I feel like if you gave me a set, you a set, Rich a set, and Hannah to set and then we all spent two hours separately making stuff. The forms that we would end up creating would all be quite similar due to the rigid way they are combined. Where as Super Tipos Veloz is more inspirational, because there are more variations.