APP Words: Hand Lettering Experiments

I haven’t dabbled in typography that much during my studies, and so I decided to carry out a few ‘experimentations’ before delving into research so that I could see what stage I’m at and what I could improve on. My focus will mainly be on the illustrations but as this is going beneath the ‘Words’ theme I would have to pay attention to the typography.

The brief doesn’t specifically state that I should do hand lettering but I thought that hand lettering has that organic and personal connotations as it’s done by hand (much like a watercolour painting could appear more ‘personal’ to the painter than a vectored image). Plus I think it would be a good idea to try something different and not be constrained by existing typefaces.

In my first experimentation I concentrated on the layout of the words rather than their form, because composition is the key if I’m going to do a motivational quote. I was inspired to do this after looking at Sean McCabe’s work and he also recommends laying out the words before stylising them. After picking out the ideal layout I then ventured into type style.

I moved on and then looked at doing just one sentence in a series of random styles. I did this while waiting for my lecture to start so it was quite spontaneous and I didn’t have any material to reference from. The sans serif looked like a cartoon and the italic script looked a lot softer and girly (which wouldn’t be good for a unisex design). However if I did want to produce something like Steve Simpson’s or Linzie Hunter’s work this could work as a standalone or group of words. 

I took one of my ideas even further by making a page of it (as seen at the bottom of the first photo) before deciding that it was just too detailed for a travel mug design although it could work if I was doing illustrative words. Nevertheless I did like trying out calligraphy so when I was on the train home I did some quick doodles of another phrase, not really thinking about the kerning nor leading. I could think about this later when I’ve decided on a specific design. 

Conclusion:

I have realised that detailed letters – even though they may appear delicate and beautiful – wouldn’t really be idea for a travel mug design because they would have to be printed quite small unless I was just going to do one quote without any detailed illustrations. Taking this into account I think I’ll try out simpler type forms. [8]

[n] Learning Outcome