Rotis

Rotis

Rotis was designed by the Otl Aicher in 1989. It's a comprehensive family group with Sans Serif, Semi Sans, Serif, and Semi Serif styles, for a total of 17 weights including italics. The four families have similar weights, heights and proportions; though the Sans is primarily monotone, the Semi Sans has swelling strokes, the Semi Serif has just a few serifs, and the Serif has serifs and strokes with mostly vertical axes. 

The blending of sans with serif was almost revolutionary when Aicher first started working on the idea. Traditionalists felt that discarding serifs from some forms and giving unusual curves and edges to others might be something new, but not something better. But Rotis was based on those principles, and has proven itself not only highly legible, but also remarkably successful on a wide scale.

I first came across Rotis when I was looking for an alternative font for the Air & Ground logo.

The Semi Serif provided the right swooping serifs which was present in the existing logo. I explored these Semi/Demi serif fonts further and eventually settle on Ela Demiserif.

Ela Demiserif Bold Italic

Typeface Design

I really did not know where to even begin with designing a typeface.

When I asked Eric Spiekerman and Jonathan Barnbrook what software they use, Jonathan pointed me in the direction of a video which goes through the process of getting drawing into applications like Fontlab.






There is also a process guide on the FontSmith blog below.

http://blog.fontsmith.com/2012/02/bespoke-process/

I think realistically I will be looking to get the shapes for the typeface drawn for the end of this project, into a point where I can put them into FontLab and make them a workable font.


Note: 8/5/2012
Also found this article, a "What I've learned" by Gerry Leonidas
http://ilovetypography.com/2010/03/25/a-few-things-i’ve-learned-about-typeface-design/

Franklin Gothic

Franklin Gothic

Named after inventor and printer Benjamin Franklin, Franklin Gothic was created in 1902 by Morris Fuller Benton. Between 1902 and 1912 American Type Founders issued the first five faces: Franklin Gothic regular, condensed, extra condensed, italic and condensed shaded.

With the emergence of serif font popularity, Franklin Gothic largely fell out of favor until in 1952 when ATF introduced the Franklin Gothic Wide font, designed by John L. “Bud” Renshaw. Within a few more years they again added a new face with the Franklin Gothic Condensed Italic font by Whedan Davis. But the heyday for Franklin Gothic’s older gothic style was being eclipsed by the newer more sleek style of fonts like the Univers® and Helvetica® typeface families.

In the early 1980s International Typeface Corporation® began developing new versions of old metal typefaces and commissioned Victor Caruso under an ATF license to create four new weights of the font for the roman and italic faces: book, medium, demi and heavy and issued them in two designs: display and text. ITC continued to develop the family in various weights and styles, and produced versions in PostScript Type 1, TrueType and OpenType formats.

David Below of the Font Bureau approached ITC and began a collaboration in 2004 to rework Franklin Gothic for the digital age. The first phase of the redesign was completed in 2008. This new family was simply called ITC Franklin and has grown into a robust set of 48 different fonts!

No other typeface really compares with the constant revival Franklin Gothic has enjoyed. It has been prevalent during all the major periods of austerity which makes it perfect as a source of inspiration for my typeface!

Albertus

Albertus

Albertus was begun in 1932 by Berthold Wolpe at the encouragement of, again, Stanley Morison. Morison had seen an example of Wolpe's inscriptual lettering and commissioned him to design a typeface based upon the design he had liked so much.

Work continued on the typeface right up until 1940.


Note:
There is some lovely bits of this typeface where curves and angles meet, particularly on the "a". I have taken this into my typeface to fit in with the contrast them, particularly in the "f", "t" and "s".

Gill Sans

Gill Sans

Gill Sans is a Humanist Sans Serif typeface introduced in 1928. It was created by Sculptor and Calligrapher Eric Gill who worked on it through the 1930's. Gill meant to create, “Absolutely legible-to-the-last-degree letters, provide beauty of form to all printed communication, and to maintain the dignity of hand drawn letterforms.”

Unlike some Sans Serif typefaces, Gill Sans maintains a humanity and personality, adding more calligraphic stokes to the geometry of the letter forms.

Times (New) Roman

Times New Roman

The development of Times Roman (or Times New Roman depending on the foundry) was instigated by Stanley Morison in 1929 for The Times newspaper. He approached Victor Lardent, a designer with Monotype where Morison was typographic advisor to design a font for the newspaper that would be highly legible, appear larger than its predecessors and take up no more space. Morison and Lardent based their typeface on Plantin so as to satisfy many of the criteria provided by the newspaper.

The two worked on the project for over two years.

I have chosen this typeface because of the period it was developed in, it was begun and finished for use in The Times newspaper during the Great Depression period that effected both Britain and America. It has also become a staple of recent times, being used as the default typeface for Microsoft since 1992 in products such as Word. 

The typeface is classed as Transitional Serif and was originally released by Monotype in 1931 in its commercial form.

The plunge

Something has changed, I'm not exactly sure what, but something has definitely changed since the start of this course.

Before the weeks just sort of blended together into a much of just trying to get through. I wasn't enjoying design. It had become a chore, no value was placed on any kind of research or preparation. Things were needed last minute, were rushed and generally as good as I could manage.

Work is still like this.

But outside of work, I have been getting asked to do work left, right and centre, I'm getting involved with local arts ventures (the town is going for up to £3m over three years with Cannock council, the big thing seems to be something similar too the Creative Village on the campus).

I've been asked for band logos, websites, branding for Tamworth Booktown Project (I really want to use Mason again, but, I kind of think I should let go slightly and try something else), I'm...having to really think about how much time I have so I can do some of these things and project work!

I'm talking about design with passion again. 

I've started putting a framework together for my own website, so I can fill it with wonderful things I hope I will create on this course.

I keep getting the thing Jackie said come into my head, about if your not happy somewhere then leave. Although I don't think it's quite that simple, its feeling more and more possible.

I am finding enormous pleasure in just looking at typefaces.

In short. All good things.

(Favourite typeface of past few days: Albertus)