EVALUATION

Promotional Publication - issuu format

Open publication - Free publishing - More maths

Final Presentation Boards

 Final presentation boards for my typeface and the promotional publication that it is showcased in. Created in InDesign and printed A2 size.

Printed booklet.

Some edited photos of my booklet which will go on my presentation boards. Unfortunately due to time and costs I could only really afford to get it printed at the college mac suites, this particular version has been printed on antique white paper on A3 sheets, before being binded using staples.

Ideally, I would have preferred to print on a nicer stock for the cover, perhaps on some glossy paper to add a bit of value. This version cost roughly 8 or 9 pounds to produce, including stocks. Quite a bit for a digital print, highlighting the benefits of lithography for mass-produced designs.

I haven't included every page here but I will upload a version in Issuu format.

updated front cover

 I thought the front cover was a bit lame in a way, didn't really give off any sort of vibe, it was simply just some text in a rectangle. I've also been advised several times that it would be good to use some kind of logo. So I've changed the front cover and incorporated a logo. I've been messing round with the design shown below for some time, sadly not documenting any progression with this. Pretty basic to be fair, but it seems fairly obvious to appear as a double M, which would stand for Midnight Maths, or my name, haha. Funny that. Below this are the front and back covers.

Booklet designing

Putting together my type specimen thing. Unfortunately, I had not realised how long it would take to make a typeface, as I have not done a proper oen before. We did one first thing last year but that was only one case of letters plus a few extra glyphs, which realistically, was nothing compared to doing the whole lot. and this one isn't even the whole lot, I could take it a few steps further and do accents, a CY version (with all the greek symbols) and Italics, though this would take me at my unexperienced level the best part of a month to make.

So, given this unexpected lack of time, I've had to keep things fairly simple and basic, in order to get something ready to print in time for the project deadline. I've laid out a small booklet combining my typeface with some photographs I took back in summer, and made use of the colour scheme displayed a couple of posts back. Once using the colour scheme for the booklet I received some good feedback from my classmates which was reassuring. For the time being I'm going to keep this layout and styling and progress towards messing about with some print techniques for the deadline. I'm fairly happy with how it is shaping up, and never has to be a 'final' product as such, I can always continue to improve any part of it after the deadline, in my own time.

In my opinion, duotone publications make for some of the freshest looking designs out there, which is why I've gone for this method. I'm also thinking about foil-blocking the yellow part of the front cover, although I don't rekon I've left enough time for me to make it crisp enough, I'll probably give it a go though. I will run a few tests with various stocks very soon, and then put the book together, alongside a few posters that I have yet to make, but they shouldn't take long.

I used a basic 9 column grid, and mostly stuck to this, breaking it in certain places where I felt my eyes would be a better judge of composition.

Front cover:

Following pages:

I would have put the back page up as well, but at the moment it's just a blue rectangle, hardly the most attractive thing.

Also I will upload this in Issuu format asap.

Crit boards mock up

Mock up presentation boards for the crit 16/11, wednesday.

Just put a few together displaying my typeface plus some potential designs for the booklet and a couple of other bits and pieces.

Excuse the bad photoshopping in the first board, I wasn't left with a huge amount of time to perfect it, plus it was just for the crit session so it's not like it's a final piece or anything.

Promotional Publication

I am well ready to begin making this promotional publication now...Earlier mind maps and sketches will go to some length to describe how it will shape up. Essentially it's going to be a landscape A5 booklet displaying my typeface and various uses for it...a type specimen as such. I will mock one up relatively quickly to allow me to test a few stocks and colour schemes. Currently I am thinking about using these two colours:

I am hoping these will reflect the idea of Midnight to a certain extent...i.e. the navy blue of dusk and the artificial yellow of street lamps. These are Pantone swatches 5-1 C (yellow) and 202-1 C (dark blue). I'll probably rethink these at some point to try and get some more convincing colours/test out some other schemes.

It seems that at the moment, bearing in mind the amount of time I have left, I'm not really going to have the chance to sit around trying to think up some crazy, next level idea. Actually creating the typeface in itself took the best part of a week, which I didn't expect, but oh well. So essentially from this point forward (i.e. for the publication) I'm going to keep things relatively simple in terms of design, and just ensure whatever I make looks the part with regards to print processes.

So essentially I am looking to just use the book as a 'test area' as such for various ideas, things that can be done with my typeface, how it might look in certain environments, nothing too fancy basically.

Here's a couple of mocked up pages I've made using that colour scheme:

I also tried it with an even darker blue....same swatch 202-1 C but with a bit more black.

I'm getting more and more concerned about the capital letter D in my typeface....as it genuinely looks like an O, and realistically I've been too scared to confront this situation yet. No one's said anything about it though....so I'm not sure...

font generation

Got onto actually attempting to convert my typeface into a proper format that can be used universally, as in so when you hit the letter S, the letter S will appear. Seems oh so simple but actually this fontographer, the program as a whole, has left me tearing my hair out and getting me overly frustrated...it's taken me hours and hours just to get to this point, and it's still not quite working properly...I can't get the line spacing and kerning to sort itself out.

A programme like this should be simple as they come, but it's just not.

Luckily it's now at a stage whereby I can beging putting together my publication for more rapidly. Any errors that still stand can be corrected when I start making it....

Promotional publication

A bit of mindmapping/rough work for how I might take this typeface further..

I quite like the idea of making a landscape A5 booklet, as this would be a comfortable size booklet to look through, plus give me a slightly alternative format to mess around with. I might look into making the actual paper dimensions that of the Golden Ratio. 

Using multiple typefaces

The typeface I have created is evidently far more suitable for headers and large pieces of text, as opposed to blocks of smaller text. Therefore, as I am going to write about it in the promotional booklet for this typeface, I will need to find an existing typeface that will look suitable when placed nearby my typeface. 

I've selected a few italic fonts which I felt might look alright (I'm going for the whole embrace diversity thing here, aiming for something that looks very different to my typeface but works well alongside it):

oops, apart fromt the last one (Prestige Elite Std Bold), which only seems to come in Bold. The others are:

Left Column top to bottom:
 

Brush Script Std Medium

Adobe Calson Pro Regular Italic

Gill Sans Light Italic

Orator Std Slanted

Right Column top to bottom:

Futura Medium Italic

Georgia Italic

Palatino Italic

Prestige Elite Std Bold

I'm quite liking it when combined with Adobe Calson Pro and Georgia....

first with Calson:

And then with Georgia:

I like the combination of a modern, sans-serif geometric typeface with more traditional serif typefaces, at the moment particularly with the Regular Calson. 

a few corrections

I noticed that due to the fact that the letters have been created using strokes instead of shapes as such, when I came to line them up they no longer had a consistent height. I quickly solved this by placing down some guides on Illustrator which would represent the maximum height of any letter, and then altered each one until they were once again all consistent.