Graphic Arts TYPOGRAPHY Part 1 Designing a font Mrs. Scavelli
You will be designing your own font to use for this project. You are to develop an original font from an existing font in Illustrator and use it to create an entire alphabet. Once the new font is created you will need to give it a name.
Directions:
1. Create a new document in Illustrator sized: 17X11 inches – this should be a horizontal layout. Save it to your Typography folder on the C Drive.
2. You will need to select a basic font in Illustrator, type out the entire alphabet (upper & lowercase), numbers 0-9, and 5 different punctuation marks of your choice.
· Be sure to include a space between each same letter and then a double space between the next letter (A a B b C c).
3. Size the font starting with a large number, 80 pt. or higher. You want to fill the entire page.
4. Select the entire alphabet, numbers, & punctuation and make a copy of the layer by dragging the layer to the icon next to the trash can in the Layers palette. (It is important to have duplicate just in case you want to start over). Turn the eyeball off in the layers palette of the original font to hide it so you can work on the copy.
5. Once you have decided on a beginning font, go to TYPE, click on CREATE OUTLINES. This will convert the font from being type to actual objects that can now be manipulated.
6. PLEASE try more than one font! The fonts look very different when typed out. Remember, this is just a starting point. You must manipulate the font to make it your own.
Options for turning font into an original design: There are several different methods you can take in order to make the font your own & you can apply more than one, see choices below.
PAINTBRUSH PALETTE
1. Use the Paintbrush Tool to convert the font to a painterly version of the font. To get to the Brush palette, go to Window & select Brushes. To see more brushes, go to Window, scroll all the way down to the bottom and select Brush Libraries for more choices.
2. When using the brush palette, you should note that the brush that you use is actually a stroke, so turning off the Fill box will give you a more accurate representation of that brush stroke. However, you can fill the fill box with a color for an added effect – try different colors (color theory comes in handy here). You can also fill the Fill Box with a Pattern.
3. If the brush stroke comes in too bulky or thick, try changing the stroke to lesser number in the Stroke Palette.
EFFECTS PALETTE
1. Distort & Transform – all of the following palettes must have the Preview box checked in order to see the changes and sometimes you have to actually move the sliders in the palette to see the changes. Experiment with them.
- Pucker & Bloat
- Roughen
- Transform
- Tweak
- Twist
- Zig Zag
2. Stylize – Preview box turned on plus applying sliders to see changes.
- Drop Shadow
- Feather
- Inner Glow
- Outer Glow
- Rounded Corners
- Scribble
3. SVG Filters – These filters are premade and take a really long time to process, so be patient, the results are worth the wait! There are too many filters to list, check them out for yourself.
4. Warp – To use the warp palette you need to make changes to each individual letter, one at a time. This is a tedious process, but worth the effort because you have a lot of control over the outcome. To select one letter at a time you must use the Direct Selection Tool (white arrow) to select each letter separately. There are too many warp tools to list so explore them for yourself.
Things to think about:
· Make sure to remember to apply color theory (use the color wheel).
· Explore changing the scale of the letters, maybe the upper case are exaggerated in a larger size and the lower case become really small.
· Keep an extra space between each set of letters so that the alphabet doesn’t become too squished.
· You can use only one option above or a combination of one or more to create your own font.
· Please don’t be in a rush, be experimental and enjoy the process!