#s3evaluations

[paulsimpsoncmpt-blog]

Week 8 - Evaluation

Week 8 has been a monumental week for my project. This week, I completed the design of my font, completed the fitting and kerning process, and begun working on promotional materials for the font. This sounds silly, but it feels quite surreal to actually have the font complete and ready for use. I spent at least a month working on it, and for it to be finished, and to not be working in Glyphs anymore is a weird feeling. Jake and Simon have been brilliant in providing me with feedback, and suggesting solutions to problems. Without their help, my font definitely wouldn’t be complete by now, and it wouldn’t have been produced to such a high standard. I very much value their feedback, as they can spot things that I wouldn’t notice otherwise, and it’s pretty important that I work out all the kinks in the font as it needs to be as functional as possible. Week 8 has been very productive and it’s paramount that I carry this productivity into the final week of the project. In week 9 of the project, I’ll be focusing heavily on producing high quality supporting materials that compliment my font in the best way possible. I’ll also be wrapping up every aspect of the project, gathering all of the necessary materials for the personal development folder, writing my final evaluation, and producing plans for the show. I’m pretty nervous about the deadline, but If I keep working hard, I know I’ll be fine. It’s the final push, and I don’t want to fail now.

[paulsimpsoncmpt-blog]

Week 7 - Evaluation

Week 7 began very well and ended very well. I’m glad that we’re finally back at UCA as it means that I can get constant feedback from my peers on the design of my font. Having other people look at your work is the best way I feel to find faults that need to be fixed. Jake and Simon have proved very useful in finding problems that I have not noticed, and my friends have also made some good suggestions that I previously didn’t think of. Since I finished the first draft of my font’s design last Sunday, a lot of progress has been made in the right direction. 90% of my time working this week has been spent working on the design of my glyphs, with the other 10% being spent on finishing Lettering for Advertising, updating my project proposal, and creating new visual research posts. In my evaluation for the second week of easter break, I spoke about aiming to complete my font’s design so that I can begin working on the kerning and leading next week. I can proudly say that this target is very much on track; I estimate that at this working pace I’m currently at, I should have my font’s design finished by Wednesday/Thursday, which gives me 3 or 4 days to work on the kerning/leading before I need to start making promotional materials for the font. I’m so happy with the progress I’ve made this week, and I can safely say that for the first time in this whole project, I’m feeling confident. I just need to keep it up, and soon enough I’ll be able to reap the benefits of my hard work.

[paulsimpsoncmpt-blog]

Easter Break Week 2 - Evaluation

This second week of Easter break has been much more productive than the first. Whilst I did hit some stagnation in the middle of the week, I started off very strong, and ended the week very strong, and I’m really happy with all of the work that I’ve got done. In the beginning of the week, I completed the entire lower-case letter set, wrapping up the letter sets completely. Once I began the number set, I had a bit trouble figuring out the style to take with the numbers, and how to construct them, but after a couple of days of trial and error, as well as a lot of thinking, I managed to create the entire number set to a respectable standard. Sunday was easily my most productive day, I created 31 glyphs through the course of the day, with most of them to a respectable standard. Some of the glyphs I made need a ton of refinements made to them, but at least I have base shapes now to build upon. I also made a lot of progress with Lettering for Advertising this week, reading through a good chunk of it and finally arriving at the section on Gothic letters, the one that is most important to my project. Next week I want to collect all the refinements I need to make into one to-do list, and I also want to read through the Gothic letters chapter of Lettering for Advertising. I’ll also be updating my project brief again, creating more visual research posts, and of course, making changes to my font; my goal is to have a good chunk of the refinements done by the end of the week, so that I can make a start on the kerning and leading next week. If I keep up the workflow I’ve had over the past two days, this should easily be possible.

[paulsimpsoncmpt-blog]

Easter Break Week 1 - Evaluation

After a bit of a shaky time towards the end of last week; this first week of the easter break has been very productive. I got a lot of backlogged work complete, completed my cap letter set, and did tons of research. I’m aiming to carry this positive, productive energy on into the second week of easter and get tons done as I get closer and closer to the deadline.

On Monday I was still travelling back from Bath, so I didn’t have a ton of time in the day to get work done; but on the train home I did spend a few hours working on a few of the cap letterforms for my typeface. Tuesday was much much better, on Tuesday I actually completed the cap letter set for MERZ, and now I have the base shape for 26 letters, which I can improve upon continuously until I have a perfect set of capital letters. On Wednesday, I began working through the list of tasks that Simon assigned me in our two tutorial sessions. I’d been procrastinating on these tasks for a while now, and I figured a little break between working on the cap and lower-case letters of my font would help me come back to it with a fresh mindset. I updated my FMP proposal to reflect what I’ve been up to recently, and did research on various artists that Simon referred to me. Thursday continued on from this research, focusing on the Constructivist movement, and looking at artists like Theo Van Doesburg and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. I also created a visual research tab on my blog, which Simon suggested. I wrote a little piece there about Van Doesburg’s modular alphabet. Friday was a very intense research day, I spent quite a while getting the remainder of Simon’s tasks complete, finishing up the research on the Constructivist movement and related artists, writing more visual research posts, articulating my attraction to Modernist typography, and also reading through Lettering for Advertising some more.

I’m super happy with the work I got done over the course of this week, and now that I’ve finished up all the backlogged work and I’m completely up to date, my mind feels a lot more refreshed, and ready to get to work on the lower-case letterforms for my font.

[paulsimpsoncmpt-blog]

Week 6 - Evaluation

Week 6 has been a bit of a difficult week for me, in terms of progressing with my project. I spent much of the week travelling around the country for an Open Day at Edinburgh Uni as well as a wedding in Bath. With all these things going on, I didn’t have much free time to actually work on my project, but where I could I did get some things done. 

The beginning of the week was super productive, I drew my letterforms to a large scale and scanned them onto my laptop, from which I made the first letterforms for my font, which at this stage I am calling “MERZ”, which is intended as a sort of homage to the inspiration. Also very importantly, on Monday, I had a tutorial with Simon going over my project to-date; I got a lot of good feedback from him on the work I’d done so far, as well as where to take my project over the coming weeks. I was feeling very good about my project at that point, and felt super confident about how everything will turn out. On Tuesday, I hopped on a train to Edinburgh for their Open Day. The train journey was about 4 hours, so I figured I’d be able to get a good chunk of work done, which I was right about. I managed to draw up 11 letters in Glyphs, as well as refine a few others. My project was coming along at a very good pace, and to a standard that I was extremely happy with. Unfortunately, on Wednesday, I wasn’t able to actually get any work done, as the Open Day took up a lot of my time. Thursday was much better though, I was travelling back to Kent on Thursday so I was able to get more work done. This work largely comprised of adjustments to letterforms I’d already made, but I did also make some new letters. Friday wasn’t as productive unfortunately. During my time travelling to Bath, I managed to finish off the capital B to an acceptable standard, as well as read through a chunk of Lettering for Advertising. As I mentioned in my blog post for the day, I was pretty frustrated with my lack of work, but I’ll just have to move on from it, and work even harder next week.

Over the course of Week 7, I plan to make a start on the work Simon wanted me to complete for my project, as well as obviously to continue developing my font, researching, and reading through Lettering for Advertising. I also intend to bring my PDF up to date, as well as updating my revision copy of my project proposal. Other bits may come up in the week, which I will detail in my blog posts for each day.

[paulsimpsoncmpt-blog]

Week 5 - Evaluation

The fifth week of the FMP has come to a close, meaning we’re exactly half-way through this project. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very anxious for what’s to come over the next five weeks. I’ve been really happy with my progress this week though; I’ve been super productive, bringing my project to a point where I’m actually starting to see results. Over the weekend of the fourth week, I’d found my first important source of type inspiration; a poster by El Lissitzky for Kurt Schwitters’ “MERZ” Dada event. The word “MERZ” is set in an art deco, avant-garde style sans-serif font that instantly caught my eye as I flicked through the pages of Thinking with Type. I just found it so sublime, and wondered what a whole font based off of these letters would look like, and just like that, my project had direction, it was moving somewhere. Over the course of the week, I set about developing letterforms based off of this “MERZ” type, creating a capital H, O and V, as well as a lower-case n, o, and d. Various refinements have been made to these letters, and as I write this evaluation, they are ready to be scanned into Glyphs, to be developed further, and to be used to construct other letters. I also read through Type-One this week, and got another book out from the library, Lettering for Advertising by Mortimer Leach, which I intend to read alongside the development of my font. I went on a trip to Shoreditch on Thursday too, but I feel that this wasn’t really relevant to my project and was more of a break from the intense workflow of the FMP, although I did see a few interesting bits of typography on the trip, which I have posted to my blog. All in all, week five has been a brilliant week; I’m finally starting to see real progress with my project, and I’m really excited for the work I’m going to be producing over the next few weeks over Easter. As I said earlier, I’m quite anxious about the FMP, but I know that if I work as hard as I can, I should be okay. Over the course of the sixth week, I hope to develop the “MERZ” letters further in Glyphs, and use them to create over letters. I also want to read through a good portion of Lettering for Advertising, and I want to research El Lissitzky and Constructivism further, to get some insights on the movement and the artist that could inform the direction of my project heavily.

[paulsimpsoncmpt-blog]

Week 4 - Evaluation

I started off the fourth week of this project without any idea of what direction my project was heading in. In the first three weeks, I’d made really good progress leading up to this point, learning tons about typographic design and type theory, learning the software (FontForge) and beginning to experiment with letterforms through sketches. Little did I know at the beginning of the week that by Friday, my project would be moving in a direction I’d never even thought of. Monday marked the project proposal deadline, and so a lot of my efforts over the prior weekend were focused on getting drafts completed to be given to Jake. I managed to complete my proposal to a standard I was extremely satisfied with, and handed it in on Tuesday. I wanted to get it done as soon as possible because it was distracting me from the developments and research I was conducting for my project. By Tuesday, I’d learned of FontForge’s pitfalls, and I decided to move to Glyphs App for my font designing. After following a online course by Charles Nix on Glyphs App through Tuesday and Wednesday, I’d soon learnt of the benefits of using Glyphs over FontForge; it was built to a considerably higher standard, had better support for learning the software, and was a lot more user friendly than FontForge. I’ve already begun to see improvements in my work in this workspace, and I’m confident that I’ve made the right decision by switching to Glyphs. I’ve continued to experiment with letterforms and research this week, reading through Texts on Type, and beginning to read through Thinking with Type; as well as starting a bitmap font exercise from Thinking with Type. I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made over the first four weeks of my project, and I aim to keep up the high levels of work that I’m conducting. Going into the fifth week, I’ll be completing the bitmap font exercise that I touched on in my previous blog post; I’m hoping that completing this will help me feel a bit more comfortable working in Glyphs, as well as giving me a bit of direction for my final font design, which I hope to begin experimenting with in the fifth week.