Brief 2: Complex Simplicity – Story Told
Weekly learning objectives
By the end of this week you should be able to:
- Contextualise the interplay between social, provenance and history when designing for a globally significant event;
- Analyse and evaluate your research findings and use sound judgement to develop an appropriate tone of voice when portraying a national or global identity;
- Develop and imagine innovative ideas that embrace risk, to make new and exciting letterforms with contemporary relevance;
- Collaborate through group discussions on the Ideas Wall.
Lecture introduction
Last week we asked you to research and document the role type and lettering have to play in revealing meaning and identity. This week we want you to reflect on your findings in order to create something new.
- Watch Stuart Tolley in conversation with Colophon Foundry to discuss the logistical and creative complications when designing a typeface for the Welsh Government;
- Examine how contemporary design practice has engaged with provenancial and historical issues when portraying national and global identity;
- Identify a link between historical reference and cultural development, in contrast to more strategic alignment to a design’s positioning;
- Identify case studies of modern type design that relate to place and location.
- We also looked at research methodologies in Module 1 – please revisit this topic to refresh your memory.
- After the lecture, take some time to explore the given resources. Make notes and reflect upon these ideas, and use them as a springboard into your own investigations. Use the Ideas Wall freely to discuss, ask questions and share ideas.
Colophon Foundry
A custom typeface’s needs
Understand:
The market
History
Cultural influences
Different ways of working
Tone of voice
Typography from different countries has it’s own style, seeing these different styles helps bring in new ideas.
Difference in approach to designing type for a brand -vs- type for general release?
Custom have a shorter lead-time, 2-3 months
Corporate job, up to 14 months
Custom client, all about engaging with them and getting inside to find solutions.
Released type is designed to be used by lots of different people, up to three years production time. Takes longer because it has to be ‘bullet proof’ for wider use.
Include Cyrillic, Arabic – a lot more variables are needed.
Typeface for the Welsh Government
Working with ‘Smorgasbord’ – a Cardiff and Amsterdam agency commissioned for ‘Visit Wales’
“Tourism, create a typeface which says ‘Welsh'”
Creative challenges:
Welsh is an ‘odd’ language, it get paired with English and translated alongside each other. Looked at the construction of the welsh alphabet, very phonetically different to English.
Research welsh type and language – references tended to be pastiche looking references but looking further they found medieval texts useful. The brief was for a contemporary sans serif typeface but the references they found tended to be old Gaelic/Celtic/medieval letterforms. That heritage needed to stay but brought up to date, those two different sides brought a really interesting brief.
Distill down and look for any specifics which makes the traditional type ‘Welsh’, found the ‘hook’ on the ‘h’ and ‘n’ and that was the element which could be a feature. Also, research into the language itself, there are 28 characters in their alphabet instead of 26 and some English characters are left out such as the ‘z’. The characters gained are called digraphs, these are when double letters are formed into a single character, eg. ‘dd’. This was to be a feature within the new font, treating them as ligatures. This became the key feature to developing the font.
As an extra level, some old medieval characters were also added for a much wider range.
Future-proofing the typeface meant including all characters which weren’t available in any other font so if could be used in all communications.
When creating a sans serif typeface it’s easy to end up with something quite bland, having the small details and flourishes wherever possible and refining them down to the point where they’re almost unseen gives the font the edge.
Consider the usage; smaller point sizes might not carry the extra flourishes well enough, they might make text harder to read.
Some reflection…
Be prepared to let things design themselves, look for the thing which makes it special.
British Airways
Negus and Negus British Airways Identity completed in 1973
‘Modernity, speed and luxury’
Includes the national flag and the BOAC/Imperial Airways emblem; the ‘speed bird’ from 1932. This was an important element to include to establish a feeling of heritage.
The choice of a serif typeface didn’t quite position British Airways as a contemporary airline as it was reminiscent of cheaper, budget airlines at the time.
In 1984, Landor Associates, a US branding agency, ‘upgraded’ the identity. The new design still referenced the Union Jack and the red, white and blue colour scheme of the earlier identity, but more focus was on the Speedbird from 1932.
By 1997 the Landor identity was replaced as it was seen as ‘too British’ and portrayed a company which was too conservative, old fashioned and ‘stuffy’, a new identity was commissioned and created by Newell & Sorrel. Their aim was to show British Airways as a less formal, more consumer-centric airline. The accompanying typeface: Mylius Modern, was created by Monotype.
As an extra step, Newell & Sorrel replaced the Union Jack tail fin with 50 original artworks commissioned to reflect British national identities within society. These were created by artists from all around the globe to represent the countries served by British Airways, this was very daring for the time and the tabloids accused the company of being ‘a traitor to British identity…‘
Mexico Olympics 1968
The biggest task in creating an identity for a brand which should appeal to a global audience is the Olympic Games.
Lance Wyman:
1966 – individual designer were going to be invited to come up with ideas for the identity of the Olympic Games in Mexico. The elements of the Olympic programme, the five rings, had to be incorporated in the new design.
‘We want to develop an image, but we don’t want a Mexican sleeping with his sombrero down under a cactus’
The designers had a two week period to show what they would propose.
Geometry in Pop-Art was an influence, along with Mexico’s folk-art and its pre-hispanic era.
Radiating out and bringing energy in is the message of the logo – would we get away with this with today’s strict branding rules mentality where logos are given ‘safe zones’ and shouldn’t interfered with?
But the chairman of the Olympic committee liked it, so that was that.
Indigenous people pressed strands of wool into wax to create images, they were invited to come and work up different approaches to the showing the identity. The main attraction was their use of colour – polar opposite to the original logo design. This led to there being no rules about the use of colour, so long as the basic structure of the logo stayed constant.
The radiating lines were used in a wide range of items from the Olympics, from postage stamps to the stadium entrances where the lines radiate from every entrance.
The identity was so strong that it didn’t always have to show the rings to be seen as part of the programme. Any chance they had to show the ‘kinetic energy’, they took it. Even down to the main pavilion, the radiating lines went out across the floor, up the walls and it was all reflected back by the mirrored ceiling.
The symbols were based on glyphs.
Some parts were based on silhouettes seen on Ancient Greek pottery. Two stamps together symbolise motion…
The silhouettes were used as a way around using the different languages necessary.
Map – maybe a diagram would be better…
The style was interpreted by students during protests at the time of the Olympics.
Reflection…
Again, take things one step further, let things happen by themselves, interpret your influences in a new way.
Week 2: Workshop Challenge
The Challenge
This week we want you to use your initial visual research from Week 1 to create a new and unique title typeface. Do not forget to document your visual developments, and be experimental with form and legibility to create something entirely new.
- Use the DNA of your initial visual research from Week 1 to create a new and unique title typeface that spells out the name of your town or city.
- Your new title lettering should reflect the identity of your town or city.
- Consider the interplay between provenance and historical story, in contrast to more strategic alignment to a design’s positioning.
The county town of Shropshire underwent great changes during the 1950s and 1960s, when the council’s watchword was “down with the old and up with the new.”
Fiona Banner 🙂
Pick up on the illegibility of manuscripts?
Illegible against legible/sharp typefaces?
Stretching the illegibility
Dragged the scripts across a photocopier whilst it was scanning, to exaggerate the shapes. Somehow it caused a mirror-image at the same time.
Hand drawn lettering
I’ve written lists of each letter over and over to get different characters to choose to make up the word, I’ve varied their approach a little to include some curves, angles or scratches on some of the letters, along with options on the nib being used.
Click the images to enlarge.
Chosen letters
I’ve pieced together options for the word, I chose some letters which had some natural flourishes so I could link some together where it suited. I hadn’t consciously added some of the lines and flourishes, they just seemed to happen from the angle or direction of the pen.
I’d always assumed these would have to be intended by a calligrapher until in the lecture from Zenab Bastawala, she mentioned how these serifs and flourishes originated from the flow of the letter rather than later additions to the shape.
The two sets below both show a first layout using the letters as they were drawn, the version below each shows the result after altering some of the characters to fit in better. Again as mentioned in the lecture, using the construction from one letter as a starting point to create another: a ‘U’ or a ‘Y’ used to create the ‘H’, etc.
‘Modern’ type
Think heritage destruction here and you think of the Market Hall. An abhorrent monstrosity in its day but now greatly loved – it’s the stand-out building of the regeneration by more than just its size.
The image shows detail from the building, this feature wraps around half of the building. The strong verticals could be something to explore for the typeface to contrast the script?
Combined Textures
The two parts aren’t going together as well as I’d hoped. Tried different ways to overlap/overlay and integrate features together but not convincing.
Include detail from the architecture of the Market Hall into the letterforms. Following on from the experiments with stretching the shapes on the photocopier I’ve added the verticals from the building into the script letterforms.
Vary the amounts and lengths of the uprights?
Feedback and Reflection
Overall, it’s not showing the old/new contrast which I’d intended at the start. I think the outcome makes sense only if you follow the work it’s taken to get there, seeing it with fresh eyes doesn’t give you that message. There needs to be a clear difference between the ‘era’s’ that I’m trying to convey.
Further work could bring that to the design if it were a longer project. Perhaps reducing the textures shown in the script would allow for a clearer or easier join between two styles.
The comments from our Critical Feedback Session:
Really interesting approach to using scenography to manually manipulate the letterforms. The outcome is well resolved. It could be more perfected by touching up the joining points of some of the added vertical strokes.
David Carson is worth looking at.
Medieval-esque calligraphy was beautiful though I think the ‘y’ was cut off – seemed very tactile.
Might want to show an image of the Market Hall with all the modernist brutalist concrete columns in a final piece/pdf to show the inspiration in your type design.
What if the word starts in hand drawn and ends in brutalist/modernist shapes.
Your week 2 project is very visually arresting but I struggled to understand the depth of the idea based on it’s current form. I think it won’t take much to push it into something awesome though and you seem to know that yourself.
