Alphabet: All letterforms

With the base letterforms that I had created, I used the Form Categorization Chart and created all other letterforms. This time, I used the software SimpleFont to create all the letterforms.

Here it is. (See the letters inside the red outline? Yes, that is the seed. Working on it, still.)

The first rough draft of Chukki:

Keyline guide

At this stage, the keyline guide is well defined. It becomes a line of control. It commands the way one letterform interacts with the other. There has to be harmony at every stage. When two different base forms are placed together, there has to be some common elements that drive the eye through a webpage full of text.

Every letterform will find a home inside this keyline guide and they co-exist even though they look diverse in terms of their origin.

The ‘keyline guide’ will be finetuned and detailed after the study is done on the existing Kannada typefaces on the web and the categorization of forms.

Working version of the ’keyline guide’ will be defined just before the defining the design criteria. Keeping the keyline guide open to changes, in a way, brings flexibility in the process.

Here is the first version of the ‘keyline guide’:

It is still vague right. Yes, it is intentional.

Pixel form

At this stage, a type designer has to resist manipulation. It is tempting to actually start deriving the final forms at this stage. But that again will hamper the output. It is essential that a type designer works merely as a copy artist.

In the above image, you can notice:
(i) How the hand drawn letter, now vectorized, is placed on the pixel grid. The thrust keylines (in pink) are clearly defined.
(ii) How the pixel form is derived behind the vectorized form
(iii) How the pixel form behaves with just the support of grid
(iv) How the pixel form behaves without the support of grid or the vectorized form
(v) How the pipel form behaves in the acutal size

At this stage, as a type designer, you need to go back and see if the form is balanced. At this stage, one can vaguely touch upon aesthetics too. It is also important to see how it renders in actual size because at the end of the day user interacts with the actual size.

Vector outlines

At this stage, when the outlines are drawn on computer, there is scope of manipulating the common characters in all letterforms so that it becomes easier when constructing the type.

When you actually see the letterforms placed in a line, a sensitive type designer can definitely see the stress or thrust keylines. Such keylines enhance redability. Every letterform will adhere to at least two keylines, out of which, one will be explicit, and the other implicit.

Here is a sample:

 The image below illustrates how the keylines can be defined.

Selecting letterforms

Selecting a letterform from the explorations is a crucial stage again. This stage is where a type is made. To select a letterform one needs to be aware of these factors:

(i) Intution
Intution is essential. But intution alone is not enough to select a perfect from out from the rest. Intution will only act as a pointer. A type designer has to analyze those pointers. Intution may point to more than one letterforms. As a type designer, one has to measure the qualities of the forms. Here the artist exits.

(ii) Scale
A mathematician enters. The letterform can be analyzed based on these factors: size, simplicity, motion, strokes, angles, endings, flourishes, links, lines, loops, circles, fly-wheels, pegs, breaks, and dots. And a type designer has to see all this in every letterform before selecting the one that best suits the need. The mathematician exits.

(iii) Sensitivity
A surgeon enters. With utmost care, every letterform has to be disected and categorized under a family. Again when a type designer is categorizing, he or she may use self-defined criteria. Here the scope of work just moves beyond letterforms. The surgeon exits.

(iv) Embracing
A critic enters. This is the stage where a type designer will embrace a letterform and maybe take it further than expected. At this stage, every letterform becomes an insight.

Here is a scan of a few base letterforms:

Update

Aplogies. Haven’t updated the blog for a long time. A lot of work has happened since January on Chukki. Will write loads of posts today. Will also feature some scans.

As I mentioned earlier, the design and research is happening parallely. Just to let you know what to expect.

Here are the things that I have done:*

(i) Freehand explorations of base letters
(ii) Selecting one form, that is consistent in width, proportion and form, from the explorations
(iii) Vector outlines of all the hand drawn base forms
(iv) Place the vector outlines on pixel grid, and construct a pixel form
(v) Use the base form to create the proportion, width, and thrust guidelines
(vi) Create all derived and independent forms

These tasks are yet to be done:

Elective 4 (Research based project)

(vii) Analysis of the Kannada script on the web (Objective)
(viii) Case studies of typefaces available on web (Approach)
(ix) Documenting the analysis and write a paper (Deliverable)

Most crucial of the tasks:

(x) Investigating the forms
(xi) Create design guidelines

* Apart from the tasks that are done, I have also spent a lot of time figuring out font creation softwares such as FontLab and SimpleFont.

balance

Yesterday, I had a discussion with my guide. And it was really helpful in two ways. One, I got a chance to explain him the progress of the project, and two, he provided some valuable insights.

He was quite happy with the geometric construction of the letterforms. But he wasn’t entirely satisfied with it. These were his insights:

(i) Complex to simple
Yes, once i categorized the letters based on the basic form. I have to now choose any three letters which are really complex. When I say complex, it has to be a combination of curves, multidirectional strokes, more than two points of thrusts, and maximum width. So when I set them right I would be able to come up with a better ’design criteria’.

(ii) Structure follows form or the other way around
Balance is a key. Now how I am approaching is limiting and may not be able to innovate. I am creating a structure and placing the letterforms inside the structure. There is another way to it. I can bring in spontaneity into the froms. But this approach may be complicated to because I need to standardize the grid. So I need to use both the approaches and create a design criteria based on the analysis from both approaches.

(iii) Look at letters as pure forms
I have been looking at letters as forms. But I need to really look at them as images. To gather some kind of an insight that would drive the design. I would be able to only derive that with some sketches of the letterforms.

That’s it, folks. Happy New Year.

Thank you, Suresh.

Awakening. Sort of.

The Kannada script can also be categorized according to the thrust and movement of each letterform.

In an Indic letterform, there is a dominant feature and a sub-dominant features. And I had exactly the same criteria to categorize the letters according to the form. But now there is another insight that was provided by a language expert, Dr Vidwans, a professor at National Institute of Design.

There is something called ‘Thrust’. Yes and that is a very important aspect in type design, especially in Indic type design. To explain it plainly, Thrust helps in readability. At the end of the day, although each letter is legible, it will co-exist with other letter. So there has to some kind of a hint for the eye to smoothly accelerate through text.

There are two kinds of thrust: (i) explicit thrust and (ii) implicit thrust. The explict thrust can be seen dominant in the Devanagari script. The Devanagari letterforms hang like fruits from the topbar. The Roman letterforms have strong base. And it seems, Oriya scipt is the most balanced.

In Kannada script few letters have top bars and others don’t. So I need to work on the visual grammar. Each letterform has to be seen with resect to forms of other letters.

Right now, I am working on the skeleton of the Kannada letterform. I am looking at letterforms as lives since we seem them all around. We intearct with them constantly.

The reference to living being helps. Skeleton helps consolidate the design criteria such as proportion, size, movement, and balance. Then I need to add body parts and give it a shape. And then I need to look at the soul of the typeface. And try to see how I very implicitly place the soul in each letterform.

I would like to share more when I reach that stage. As of now, this is my design process:
(i) Construction of base and independent letterforms
(ii) Creating a visual grammar
(iii) Placing soul in each letterform

Thank you Dr Vidwans.

Skeleton

The geometric construction has enhanced the look of the base letterforms. They now look serene. And proportions are maintained.

Another interesting thing (once again the thought borrowed from Dr Bhagvat’s process of categorization) is that every letterform will have a specific unit based on the width.

Take a look at the construction of skeleton of the base letterforms. These are intial sketches.

There are many reasons why skeleton should be build upon first.

Skeleton of the letteform will have a structure that helps gain legibility even before the weights are stuffed into the structure. Once the skeleton is perfect, it is just a matter of choice to place different weights around the defined structure.

With this exercise, I have learnt these things:

1. Place letterforms under specific width. Categorize letterforms based on the width  too. And if needed, create one’s own unit for width. I have used Graphical unit. One graphical unit being 1 cm. Most letterforms are place inside 4 graphical unit.
2. The logic behind curves in all letterforms can be repeated to control too many variations. So the circles that help construct one base letterform may help construct another letterform without increasing the radius of any of the circles.
3. If the solution to the problem is right, then it has to be beautiful too. Just solving a problem, in type design, is no more a challenge.
4. Before constructing letteforms, clarity can be achieved by creating thumbnails of the trial constructions. Then based on the analysis of thumbnails, final constructions can be carried out. This will save a lot of time and iterations.
5. Why geometry? Because symmetry comes into play. And symmetry definitely works on the screen. And I am sure I will have tough time dealing with these forms on the screen grid.
6. Using graph sheets as medium to plan the construction is recommended. I am using a basic Camlin compass to create circles of specific radius, a blue leaded pencil to mark the centerpoints of the circles and to draw diagonals that help decide the form of most letters, and a charcoal pencil to extract the form out of the construction.

Metaphor

 

Another challenge was to take all the base forms and see if I would be able to relate something with each one of them.

Now, how would this help me design a type? Maybe it doesn’t help me. But that was my way of looking at aesthetics. I mean if the form has to look really beautiful, beyond good proportions and legibility, it has to be related to the aesthetic form in our mind.

Although I struggled a lot to figure out the metaphors with some help from Asutosh and Armeen since they don’t know the language or can relate to the script.

For me this exercise was tough, for these reasons:

1. Whenever I used to think of a letter, I used to think of the image that is usually associated with the sound. For instance, in Engish, When I say ‘A’ you will think of apple. Now that is based on the sound. But can we think of an image with the form?
2. I am exposed to script too much. And that is in a way, sometimes works against. You are so familiar to forms you treat them as text and you try to change the structure accordingly. But there needs to be an objective base to build a letter set and not intution.
3. Asutosh provided this insight: “Why don’t you try gerometric forms? I mean, use circles and squares. Maybe you will be able to look at proportions mathematically, rather than going by a few hand written examples.” Suddenly everything fell in place. I knew what direction I should take.
4. Dr Bhagvat suggests that categorization of the letterforms can also be done according to: (i) The size (ii) Simplicity (iii) Motion/stroke/angles (iv) Endings/flourishes (v) Anatomy
5. Dr Bhagvat has also studied characteristics of Devanagari. And his analysis is comprehensive, although debatable. But I also need to study the characteristics of the Kannada letterforms. It will help me when I start constructing the letterforms.

At this moment, the stuggle is to understand proportions. Not much standardization has been brought about in the Kannada script.