If the face fits (part 1: Type specimen book) Baskerville

11th Jun 2021Leave a comment

I started off my Serif typefaces with Baskerville. Baskerville was designed in the 1750s by John Baskerville in Birmingham, UK. Baskerville typeface showed contrast between thick and thin strokes and making serifs sharper and more tapered. Baskerville was inspired by Calligraphy and the typeface was and still is very popular in book design. John Baskerville wanted to create books of the greatest possible quality and his typeface certainly made this happen.

My idea for this design was to create a layout representing book design. My original idea was to create an old book and then incorporate Baskerville typeface and the characters into it.

I feel like I spent ages doing this design because I messed around with one idea trying to perfect it all day and then decided in the evening that the simplified version would be much better! I wanted to keep the old fashioned style but still try and bring in a modern vibe!

At home I have some old sketchbooks from 1905.. inside are all clothing patterns that have been drawn, there are blank pages that appear in the book though which are quite yellow and mottled with age and my initial idea was to scan these pages in to use as textures for my design. However, when I was scanning them in, the cover of one of the sketchbooks fell apart (they had been covered in brown paper) and underneath the brown paper was an old Edwardian/Victorian Cherub image with the words “Drawing book” I thought that would be a good idea to bring into my design but change the words “Drawing book” to “Baskerville”

**INSERT IMAGES OF DRAWING BOOK

I changed the colour of the Cherub image to try and make it look more modern.. I wasn’t convinced though. I also changed the name “Drawing book” to “Baskerville” in Photoshop. When I did my research on Baskerville, it is well known for its glamourous looking ampersand which I instantly recognised from the V&A logo. I decided to use that in the design as it adds that old traditional feel but with a modern twist.

“Bridging the gap between old style and modern type” was a quote I found that summarises Baskerville and that was the same feel that I wanted to carry through my design. I also used the quote to show off the different weights, variations and pt. sizes of Baskerville.

Digital Development

After doing much digital design development I realised (many hours later!) that the layout looked far better with just the ampersand. Let that ampersand do the talking!

The final mockup

The final design and layout is very simplistic and minimalist but I think it keeps an old fashioned traditional feel with a much more modern look.

If the face fits (Part 1: Type Specimen Book) Lo-Res

10th May 2021Leave a comment

When it comes to decorative/ fun or “gimmicky” typefaces I am not very knowledgeable! In my work I mostly use Sans-Serif which is why I have made my specimen book “Sans heavy”! For this section of my specimen book I had to do my research and look into different typefaces that I could use for pixelated/fixed width fonts. I started by looking at Adobe fonts on Typekit. I found one called Lo-Res which gave me the most ideas for my design. It is also designed by Zuzana Licko which is interesting because she very successfully designed Mrs Eaves but this typeface in my opinion seems a far cry from that! I cannot say I am a fan of this typeface at all; in fact, I am not a fan of this category at all and I shall probably never use this typeface or any in this particular category ever again unless the brief directly states it! It did however still give me good ideas for my design…

I follow an Instagram account called “Designer humour” and it is full of funny memes relating to the design industry and stupid things clients ask or say, this typeface made me instantly think of one of those memes that I read;

“I am just sending you the Hi- res logo… It’s in Word is that OK?“

Lo-Res is a very pixelated, hard to read typeface and it lends itself well to the quote above! I decided to create the whole layout in the style of an email from a non-designer sending a designer their “high res” files!

Digital Development

I had the idea in my head of making the whole double page spread look like the screen of a computer with the emails open and for there to be an email on there from the “non-designer” with a Microsoft Word attachment which I would then link back to Lo-Res.

I firstly needed an email with a fake Word document to then edit in Photoshop. I got my boyfriend to send me a fake email with a word attachment on it so that I could use this as a base for my design.

I deleted Chris’s name and information and replaced it with a fake name. I then started designing different layouts around this. I found that using the whole screen on my layout was too much to look at. I needed to strip it down to its bare minimum. I started to delete elements down to it’s essential to see if it made the overall design better.

Once I deleted elements it did make the overall design better.. I then decided to move around what was left on my page for better hierarchy. The eye needed to flow and skim over the content better. What I ended up with was a lot of negative space with elements thoughtfully placed across the spread. I added there are 2 main focal points on the design and that is the Word attachment and the Lo-Res quote. It needs to be clear almost straight away what the pages are all about.

The Final Mockup

If the face fits (Part 1: Type specimen book) Mrs Eaves

6th May 2021Leave a comment

The last Serif typeface I chose was Mrs Eaves. I like the story behind this typeface and it also ties in nicely with Baskerville.

Mrs Eaves was designed in 2006 by Zuzana Licko in 1996. It is a variant of Baskerville. Baskerville is known for being absolutely perfect, stark and sometimes hard to read and Licko went out to create a version that was softer and more feminine in approach.

Mrs Eaves was named after Sarah Eaves; Baskervilles live in housekeeper who would later become his mistress and eventual wife. It was the story that drew me in to this typeface.. Sarah Eaves was John Baskervilles live in house keeper whose husband went on to leave her and her 5 children. Sarah in time became Baskervilles creative assistant and mistress and then when Sarah’s estranged husband died, they were married. Sarah Eaves was very much the woman forgotten in typography.

I wanted to bring an element of this story into the design; again, similar to Baskerville I had the idea to create a book design for the layout and tell the story of Mrs Eaves but then I saw that Mrs Eaves has the most beautiful ligatures and I wanted to do something with this. At college when I was 17 we had a project (similarly worded to this exercise actually!) called “create a type-FACE” or something similar where I had to create an actual face out of typefaces. I thought about creating a similar thing on my layout using just ligatures. I had the idea of a very feminine pattern and then possibly repeat printing it across the page. What I ended up with though was slightly different; I am a little bit disappointed because this is one of my least favourites looking back on it and it seemed to have so much more potential at the beginning but time was very much against me in this exercise.

I created a very similar layout to Baskerville as the 2 are related back to each other and then started messing around with the ligatures to make a feminine looking pattern. The pattern I created looks a bit like a Celtic cross, it reminds me of something that would appear in a stained glass window. It has a traditional yet modern feel to it. I tried to turn the opacity down on the design as I still think it looks a bit harsh but tuning it down just made it disappear into the backdrop.