THE JoDI FONT
During my 7 month freelance recap I gave you all a glimpse of the font I designed for a client of mine and I wanted to share a little bit more about that experience.
First, a little background: I have a degree in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Visual Communications (read: graphic design). In school, we spent very little time on the computer and were instead armed with technical pens, ink, brushes and pads of tracing paper. 50% of my classes were dedicated to studying typography and I fell in love - hard.
Since then I've found ways to incorporate hand-lettering into my designs but lately I've been more curious and excited about designing fonts for myself. I don't have a lot of technical experience in the matter - so it's a lot like art school where I'm working with the basics - ink and paper.
So, when I was hired to design a blog header for a new client I knew I wanted a super modern, chunky and geometric typeface to work with. I went to my usual place to find a font I sworn I had seen before but was coming up dry. So I decided to knock one out myself - I started with two shapes (a rectangle and circle) and a tight grid in Adobe Illustrator. I don't have any fancy font software so I have to set each letter by "hand" - I feel like a modern-day Gutenberg over here! I'm sure it's full of technical flaws but it was fun - I was so excited to be working on a typeface that I almost skipped lunch without noticing. And I never forget to eat.
I'm looking forward to getting deeper into this sort of thing. I know it will get hard but I'm excited to venture into more complicated hand lettering, scripts and serif designs.
P.S. Typographer and illustrator Jessica Hische is a huge inspiration to me. Even if you're not a total typography nerd you must check out her Daily Drop Cap project here.
You might have some luck building this font in FontStruct, a web-based font creator that uses geometric shapes just like you did here. Haven't used it myself, so tell me how it is if you use it.
http://fontstruct.com/
I feel similarly about my cartography design. I was taught with pen, ink and frosted plastic "paper" but there's only real application digitally. I've thought about dipping back in to keep my feet wet. And like your type obsession, I'm obsessed with maps, so why not!
I do have a healthy appetite for fonts though (typography is just as important with cartography design) and I do super love the chunkiness of this one.
Bravo!
I LOVE it. It looks so retro and modern looking at the same time.
Thanks for the link Daniel - I think I'll continue to work in the old fashioned way for a while (as I'm still learning) but I'll definitely keep font struct in mind.
Emily - I love designing me some maps too! I don't have any sort of training as far as that goes but my map obsession is definitely there.
You hand drew the characters in this font of type? Ya got skillz :) I RSS these feeds fer my type fixes:
http://ministryoftype.co.uk/
http://www.lettercult.com/
http://friendsoftype.com/
Eye Say Design - I started with some pen and ink sketches and then took those ideas into Illustrator and from there put shapes together "by hand" to create this typeface. I hope that makes sense - I didn't mean to be misleading!
It's depressing sometimes that all my schooling in college was on the computer. When I graduated, I had never even considered making anything by hand until I worked with someone who did just that. makes me wanna smack my teachers around a little. Oh and if we learnt about typograph, I was napping during those classes [or playing yahoo scrabble ... I was not a very good student at the age of 17+]
I'm considering taking a typography night class though.
Love this! I'm a graphic designer as well. Unfortunately most of my classes were like Em's...mostly computer based. It was a bummer because my love for drawing and painting led me to design. I'd love to see more posts about your hand lettering process too. It's so interesting to see how other designers work!
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