Advanced Typography

June 28, 2021

Advanced Typography | Task 3

29/04/2021 - 27/05/2021 (Week 5 - Week 9)
Naim Zuki, (0346615) | Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Advanced Typography
Task 3

LECTURES

Introduction | Task 3

For our final task of the semester, we're assigned to utilise the knowledge we've accumulated throughout our time in typography to create a font that solves a larger problem or is meant to be a part of a solution in the area of our interest, be it graphic design, entertainment media, animation, or new media. Or explore the use of typefaces in your area of interest, understand its existing relationships, identify areas that could be improved, explore possible solutions or combinations that may add value to the existing typeface.

INSTRUCTIONS

Module Information Booklet: Advanced Typography
<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-tJ4lBOSlgGniAxdZZmL8sOEkwL_rsv7/preview" width="640" height="480"></iframe>

TASK 3 | TYPE EXPLORATION & APPLICATION

I began the project by pitching ideas on what problem or exploration I wanted to dive into. Although it took a while to settle with the final decision, I've settled with exploring animated fonts and the different applications they can be used for. I then head off to find some inspiration.

Fig. 1.0, Inspirations, (Images courtesies of Davide Scarpantonio, Freepik, BAST Building Trust, Mike Ness, Frankie Figs, WDD STAFF, wattpad, and Playbuzz)

During the introduction of the task, Mr Vinod showed the class a font that, if I remember correctly, his past student made, which was an experimental animated font. It enthralled me. When I saw that, I started thinking about the different applications it could be used for particularly in video games, events, and art exhibitions. I thought about it a little more and I came across the idea of making a printable animated typeface using scanimation. It was brilliant! It can be used as an alternative to LCD, it can be printed on recyclable material thus reducing energy waste, and it's an interesting art exhibition idea. The idea was easy enough as a concept, but figuring out the technicalities at the time was a headache.

Before I started experimenting with scanimation, I first designed my font from scratch using the grid that I made for Task 1. The grid was obviously tinkered in order to be able to provide proper measurements for all the glyphs.

Fig. 1.01, Grid Used, 28/06/2021

Fig. 1.02, Font Design Progress, 28/06/2021 - 02/07/2021

Fig. 1.03, Finalised Base Font, 02/07/2021

I began the animation process by exporting the individual glyphs into After Effects and experimenting with different animations. The general direction I wanted to head into was creating a glitch effect to enhance the nature of the optical illusion that is scanimation. The following is what I've come up with.

Fig. 1.04, Finalised Digital Animated Font, 03/07/2021

https://youtu.be/Vt_e0uvGSnI

Now all that's left is to create the scanimation look for each individual glyph. First, we have to review the limitations of scanimation: Scanimation works best if the frames are limited to 4 in total and not focused on small details. Therefore in order to make this work, I have to choose the best four or five frames out of the 60-frame animation, which made the process painstakingly long and repetitive. Instead of experimenting with one glyph at a time, I stupidly experimented with all 60 frames of the 24 different glyphs. Realising this mistake, I experimented with the letter A before applying the same effect onto the rest of the alphabets.

Fig. 1.05, Base Animation

Fig. 1.06, The five frames chosen to be animated

Fig. 1.07, Experimental Scanimation

Fig. 1.08, Scanimation Test Run

Fig. 1.09, Final Scanimation, 03/07/2021

https://youtu.be/b3m7LCVFsA8

After completing the typeface, I tried to generate the font using both fontforge and calligraphr. However, after realising that creating fonts with rasterise images instead of vector elements is a recipe for disaster, both software traces the images and the vector output wouldn't work underneath scanimation. I've tried using Illustrator's image tracing as well, hoping the computing power would help vectorise my typeface. But alas, it was unfruitful. I've decided to not generate the font due to time constraints. This goes without saying, generating this font is possible, but the time needed to recreate each glyph using vector all the while making sure it works in scanimation is time very time-consuming. Below is my failed attempt at generating the typeface.