Project 1 - DIY Alphabet

Our first VCOM project focused on typography. After studying the basics of this form of visual communication, we were asked to create our own alphabet - inspired by our own theme, and using a medium of our choice. Having really enjoyed the typography lecture, I was quite excited to have free reign to design my own typeface.

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Development​

To start with, I had a think about themes I'd find interesting and fun to work with. I have quite an eclectic set of interests, so the horizon was broad - I narrowed my ideas down to a few to experiment with.
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"ASTRAL" - galaxy theme

I liked the idea of a galaxy theme, particularly the colours associated with nebulas - that scheme of cool blues and purples with hints of warm pink. After looking for inspiration, I chose a couple of fonts - Spacecard and Nicotine Stains - as rough templates to experiment with. I felt they suited because they were bold, eccentric and futuristic.

I tried both marker pens and watercolours as mediums - the watercolours obviously blended better, but the boldness of the markers made the characters stand out more.
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"GERBILIO" - gerbil theme

I sought inspiration from my furry children on this one - with their lengthy tails and flexible bodies, gerbils seemed like an ideal muse for this project. I chose the font Curlygirl as a style reference, given the similarities between the flicking serifs and gerbil tail-tufts. I used fineliners and marker pens to

illustrate this concept. It may be unnecessary, but for whoever's interest it may pique, below are my models: Burton, McGhee, Peanut, Cashew, Macchiato and Bean!

"HASBEAN" - coffee theme

I am a major caffeine addict, so I tried basing a font concept on this. To imitate the look of coffee spills, I used black coffee as a staining medium, using the Splatink font as reference for its splodgy, spattered appearance. Once it had dried, I added some coffee-related details on top with fineliners and markers.
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"PINPRICK" - cactus theme

My house has always been covered in houseplants thanks to my lifelong love affair with cacti and succulents. I'm not sure why, but I felt the font Colona MT was a fitting one to go with for this theme. I used any bowls and enclosed spaces as "terrariums" for the fineliner illustrations.

"SLOWPOKE" - snail theme

Snails have fascinated me for a long time; they're just so charming and comical, and pleasant to look at. This concept was inspired by the trails they leave on their travels - some might see it as disgusting, but I always found a kind of beauty in the way they become glittery patterns in the sunlight.

I used Arial Rounded as a rough template, favouring it for its simplicity. Again, I used a fineliner for the outline of the snails, and watercolour to colour them and the trail. Personally, out of all the themes I experimented with, this was one of my favourites.

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The Final Alphabet: "Slowpoke"
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For the final piece, I ended up going for the snails. It was quite enjoyable to design - the soft curves and inferred slowness were gentle and soothing to draw, so I hope it invokes an equal calm in the viewer (unless you're squeamish about molluscan secretions).

I had a lot of fun mapping the trails into letterforms, and trying to find the balance between an "authentic snail trail look" and legibility. I tried to use calligraphic rules (stroke order and direction) to determine the placement of the snails themselves, popping them where the pen would leave the paper - as if they'd "written" this in their own biological medium.

                                (NO SNAILS WERE HARMED...)

Speaking of biology, I got a lot of inspiration from an AH Bio experiment I did once based on the mucosal pheromones of gastropods. I had three groups of "trailmaker" snails - control, fasted and fed - and a small number of "trailtester" snails. I would let the trailmaker cross a glass sheet while I traced the trail on paper beneath. After that, I would set a trailtester down at the base of that trail and trace its travels in a different colour. The results were pretty stark - the testers were far more likely to follow the trail if it had been left by a fed snail. If the trailmaker had been fasted, the tester would often ignore the trail altogether. This suggested that snails can tell not only the direction of a trail, but also if its maker had eaten well - a pheromonal "hint" that could help them locate a good food source. Anyway, after a lot of waffling, here's my point - hours of tracing snail trails have burned those patterns into my brain, and I used them as inspiration for this project.

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​project notes