My Typography

For my project on Typography I was asked to create my own typeface using elastic bands. So I chose to pair up with my good friend Amy, once we had an idea it was quite easy to roll with it. We decided to do a very straight-edged alphabet in 3D and we wanted the main reccurant shape to be triangles. This was because we started drafting the designs of the letters on graph paper, which reminded us of Math equations. The 3D side of the idea was purely to make the designs more challenging and add and extra edge to it. After many hours of thinking about what the shapes in the letters were going to look like, we started to make them in elastic bands. To do this without ruining our original designs we blew up some graph paper and pinned it to Amy's cork board so that we would be able to get the proportions as close to the original. Of course when you make something small and try to create a larger version the proportions are going to be slightly stretched. Which meant that no matter how long we spent on it some did come out looking different to how we wanted it but there wasnt really any way to change that without making it smaller but we wanted all the letters to be the same height and width so we couldnt really do that. In the end thoughI really like how the alphabet turned out and I think its more quirky than we originally thought it would be but thats what makes me proud of it. I feel like we did a good job of it an for my first ever Typography project it was pretty good. I like the concept, obviously I think some of the letters could have been better like the "J" but I think the fact it is so strange is one of its many good qualities.

We also had to design some posters advertising our new typeface, mine I wasnt particularly proud of as I am quite new to poster design. I want to put them up anyway even though I dont like them because I am going to make some improvements on them so I want some before and afters. I also think it important crtique your own work and say why you dont like it!

In this poster I wanted to show the angles in the shapes of the letter but I wanted it to be the main focus as it was what the typeface was about. I also wanted to show the construction paper because that meant that you could see how the type was made and the concept behind the type. I also put a description of how to mathematically measure an angle to also show that we were focusing on the angles. We decided to name the typeface "typesine"
which was a play on the words typeface and cosine (how to measure a triangle). I believe that my thought process in creating this poster was right but my execution was probably wring in that the construction grid is too overpowering on the page and drowns out the shape of the letter. Also because black absorbs colour so it is more difficult to see the red elastic lines.








These next ones were just variations of the colour, I wanted to experiment with the colour of the lines because they needed to stand out from the background so I thought that it was quite important.
I thought that the yellow added a nice touch, subtle but not too weak.






















I decided to make the back ground white because I thought that it might bring the image into the foreground a bit more.

Jaz's Blog

Hey, I'm Jaz! I am currently doing a course at the University of Lincoln on Interactive Design and this is my Blog on Typography. I am doing a Blog on Typography mainly as part of a project but I think it will be interesting for me to show off what I have been learning!



For my Typography project I had to research a Typography practitioner, the Practitioner which I picked out to research was Paula Scher.
Paula Scher is a graphic designer as well as an artist who specializes in Typography. She is part of one of the biggest design agencies in New York, Pentagram. She also and her own design firm aptly named Koppel and Scher.

Scher is well-known for her most recent project, a series of Typographic maps.

What I like about Scher is her attention to detail. In all her recent work she very carefully pieces together her composition. Like in her "maps", the work has been very carefully analysed and must have taken her months to do yet the wording flows in such a way to make you think that it is free and full of expression. The series also has bursting, vibrant colour creating a very positive, warm atmosphere.
Her Typographic maps show the whole world with each city, town and village's name written down in a very bold, white type. This work is also a perfect example of typographical hierarchy, with the country names the boldest and clearest, the towns and villages names smallest and not as easy to read. Once the type reaches the sea, the forms of the words and sentences become very free-flowing to give the illusion of movement.

I also enjoy how she hasn't just created a map, she has also represented where certain important events started like the eye of the Tsunami that formed near Sri-lanka. She has made the form of the words build the form of the eye of the storm and it actually says in the center "eye of tsunami". In a way she has created a documentation of history as well as a map. Its an image that literally represents the world, its landmarks and cities. I love this idea, that combined with the vibrant colour leaves you with a feeling of hope and happiness.


I also notice that each continent had a different pallet of colours and I wasn't sure what that would represent. Whether it represented a divide in the nations or just a representation of the different cultures I couldn't decide but either way it is beautiful and showed me something that I had never seen before. It also gave me a different view on typography as I had previously thought it boring, these images completely changed my perspective.

Paula Scher has also done many other things with Pentagram that have been interesting, like her posters.


This is one of my favourite posters of Scher's. This is because I like the subtle colour, the shape of the lettering and the way that she has made the words out of other words and tiny letters. I am seeing a pattern in her work being that she keeps making images out of letter forms and words. I do think that this concept is interesting because it is suggesting that everything is made of words, which in a way it is because humans have words for everything and without that name it would be nothing, you would not be able identify it. So I do think that this is an important point to have in mind when looking at her work. Another reason I like this poster is because of what it repesents, it says "art is.." and doesnt finish the sentence, leaving the viewer to make up his/her mind on what art is. Many people interperate art in different ways and some people would say that typography isnt art. I think that Scher tries to prove these people wrong because all her pieces of typographical work look like art to me.

Some of her other posters have had a different styling to them, but they still totally revolve around type.


These are posters that she did with Pentagram which seem cut-out and are clearly focused towards a younger audience. She has used lots of different typefaces and tries to get as much information onto the page as possible on one, yet keeps the information relatively simple on the other, even though they are advertising the same thing.They both have a similar colour scheme, yellow and black, and use similar typefaces.