OUGD601: Practical - My Input (2)

Creating Alternate Characters

One benefit of the OpenType & Unicode is the allowance of alternate characters within the same font file. I wanted to include some Victorian eccentricities within the typeface, which you will see below.

 Creating an A with a swash: 

Experimenting with an A with a diagonal crossbar:

Experimenting with an R with an elegonated tail - I chose to remove this as I felt it did not work. 

A selection of alternate A's:

Trying out an alternate crossbar for the B:

A curved crossbar in the H, to match the A:

After discussing the height of the central bar for the E, I decided to include two different options, one as an alternative: 

The E crossbar doesn't line up anywhere near the A, which is the same for the H alternative. However, I quite like the imperfect look it offers. The original inscriptions had these imperfections, and I think it would offer a unique way of working with the font: 

The original inscription had an O with classic proportions, which was taken away for consistancy. However I liked the idea of including it as an alternate character: 

Adding Punctuation

Obviously to create something usable, punctuation is needed. Here are a few characters that were added.

Asterisk:

Exclamation mark: 

Colon: 

Em dash:

Colon:

Quotation  marks and a comma:

Unique Characters

I thought it would be fun to create a 'alternate character' that showed where the font had been designed. For example, if the user types 'UK', 'CZECH' or 'AUSTRIA', a silhouette of that country could also be used. 

Although this is quite a fun idea, I thought it would be entirely useless, so was later dropped. 

CZECH:

AUSTRIA:

All three together: 

Back To Some Alternate Characters

Below I experimented with a different W, but I felt the double central serif's added too much weight to the character, which would look even heavier at small scale. 

Adding a number sign - This actually has it's own Unicode character symbol. I thought this went well with the Victorian inscription, as it could be used for signage.  

I also worked on a similar but alternate option: 

An alternate Q, with a larger swash:

Creating Some Numerals

After Marsi had created a beautiful 5 and 7, I had some weights and proportions to work with. 

Below I created number 1:

Number 2, using Marsi's '5' Serif:

Creating an 8 is always difficult, at this stage it felt too heavy in comparison to the other characters:

Working on the 6 and 9 - These used similar propotions to the 5. However serifs were not added as they seemed to make the shape appear too heavy. I am still contemplating adding them though...

Ornaments

Inspired by 'Hoefler Text', I thought it would be great to add some ornamental characters. 

Below you can see an idea I had for a border:

Another border design:

What should I add as corner pieces? 

Another ornament, which I worked on symmetrically: 

Working on another ornament, this one a lot more detailed with flourishes:

From the previous ornament, I could create some corner pieces: 

 Hoefler Text contains 'arabesques', which are ornamental tiles. I loved the idea of creating some. Luckily I have had some experience with drawing ornamental shaping, from an ink drawing I created 3 or 4 years ago:

This helped when creating much more basic forms: 

Ensuring the design fits into a box: 

Some quick tests: 

As you can see, some of the flowers stem is too thin and detailed. For this reason I made the form simpler and thicker. 

A simple, yet fun, circular ornament: 

This was experimented with in a negative colour, but I feel it didn't work.