Fonts That Fit

September 23, 2022

FONTS THAT FIT

In my assignments these past few weeks, I've had to choose a typeface that I thought fit my personality, trace and fill three typefaces that spoke to me, and begin to research creating my own typeface complete with Caps, Lowercase, Numbers, & the Ampersand.

Based on a quiz that we all took....I am Helvetica!

           

I was both surprised and not so by this answer. While the definition does match my personality, I feel like the quiz left out questions for the possibility of DRAMA. Not in the manner of a DRAMA QUEEN but more in the context of FLAIR, in the vein of Moira from Schitt's Creek. My very own daughter defined me as "eclectic" LOL!

I, personally, love any one of these to personify me:

As long as I have loved words and letters it has never occurred to me that one had to choose a typeface to fit the occasion, as it were.  I naively thought that it just happened, that the typefaces that were used were used specifically for those instances without a lot of thought going into it, it just was. Well, was I mistaken! In another assignment, we were to choose three typefaces that spoke to us, trace them as best we could, and take in the finished product. Here I have shown 3 completely different typefaces that spoke to me, a Serif, a Sans Serif, and a Script. It was not easy tracing them even on a lightbox so imagine having to actually create each letter uniformly, it definitely was not an easy task!

If you've also never really thought about it, you might want to try this exercise. Choose a typeface that speaks to you, print it out, get some tracing paper, and put it on some sort of light source whether it's up against the window or on a lightbox. Try tracing it and then filling it in and see how you do and then try doodling your own typeface and see what you come up with. I think we'll all be pleasantly surprised with the work that comes through!

I've also posted here a sketch that I depicted what I imagine Scopophobia (the phobia of being watched) would feel like. Just to be clear, it is NOT MY phobia, (thankfully, I don't think I have a phobia). It is a phobia that I chose to interpret through art, writing SCOPOPHOBIA in the center of my sketch, I played around with the letters, and without really realizing it, I was creating a font, a typeface.

Upon seeing this sketch posted here, I can see so many things that I would change including the KERNING (the space between two letters) as we can plainly see, the letters are most certainly NOT spaced evenly! It is also very difficult to see the eyeball within the letters "O" to punctuate more intensely punctuate the anxiety. I'm not sure if my final piece was meant to evoke a creepiness or a light that shines through all of us to have the strength to OVERCOME our individual phobias whatever they may be.

While learning the fundamentals/anatomy of typefaces, the history of how some were created, and how to tweak some of the ones that already exist, when sort of looking at my sketch and creating my own font it didn't seem like I was creating a font, I was just doing what I do. But now my assignment is to actually create a full typeface with capital letters, lower case letters, numbers, and the Ampersand and possibly even some wingdings and dingbats!

 I truly underestimated the tireless work of others that have come before me and I look forward to throwing myself wholeheartedly into any and ALL of the projects yet to come!