Typography – Level 2 Design

March 10, 2016Brandon Barton No Comments

Children’s Picture Book – Typography Research

After realising the importance of typography in branding with my first brief, I felt an evaluation and some research would be equally appropriate for a children’s picture book, which is my second brief for Semester B. After doing initial artist research I quickly discovered that the style of type used to compliment the imagery and illustrations is equally as important as the art itself .

After researching fonts, I found that a lot of childrens books use a font called Futura, which is coincidentally the same font used for the body copy of text throughout my branding brief, after applying it to my sketches I knew straight away that it’d be the font of my choice, however I still tried other fonts as comparison, these were:

Please Write Me a Song, PencilPete and CrackedCrayon.

All these fonts were found on http://www.fontspace.com/category/children

Despite all the experimentation I felt as though these fonts didn’t quite capture the simplistic nature of my picturebook, the style I went for which was clean flat colours, was complimented best by an equally clean font, which in my opinion was Futura Book only.

March 9, 2016Brandon Barton No Comments

Workshop 8 – Corporate Branding Booklet

During the workshop this week I made further progress with my branding brief, in particular the Corporate branding identity booklet. The branding book consists of 16 pages detailing how the brand I have created should be used, this includes: Colour Detailing, Typography and Sizing Instructions.

This booklet is the finalised output format for the overall module and in effect wraps up all the loose ends with the other output formats I have created.

The current document only contains placeholder text and a very sparse amount of imagery, this is currently just to work out a theme and an overall document which has flow and movement, whilst staying informative by detailing the specifics of the brand.

Whilst the branding booklet is still in the early stages of development I feel as though this as my final output format ties the brief up as a whole. After this is complete my aim is to make some concept art and finalised sketches for my game.

Overall I feel as though there is some strong development, and sticking to a coherent theme makes the overall product have more visual strengths and strengthens the brand as a whole.

February 25, 2016Brandon Barton No Comments

Logo development – Finalized Design

In my previous logo development blog post I explored a multitude of designs, with different colour palettes, typography and fire vectors. During that blog post I favoured one design above the rest and so I decided to further adapt it and use it to create some more designs which felt thematically appropriate.

After trying new fonts and playing with some ideas I had before I feel as though designs 3 & 4 are appropriate for my logo and branding of my company. The font used feels easy to look at, similar to the fire in the regards of the soft colour and smooth edges, the colour of the fire also works well with just solid black whereas other iterations try to include the same colour as the fire and it feels visually weaker with, and without the black.

I struggled to pin down my opinion to just one design, so I decided to ask friends and other designers which they preferred, the general consensus was actually between 1 & 5, both of which received around 10 or more people picking between the two. After trying those logo’s on documentation, making them larger and smaller, both of them failed the test of where they were appropriate, design 5 in this instance worked better on documents where it was larger, but when shrunk the black lines in the font made it look bold and too loud.
Design 1 also looked good at the size it was in this document, however when it was made larger or smaller it had the issue of taking up too much space, or becoming illegible.

Whilst design 4 didn’t have as many people comment on it, I feel as though after trying to apply other logo variations to documentation it’s the most coherent design, which is applicable to most of the places I’ve tried to use it.

Overall I feel as though design 4 is the one I will choose as a finalized piece, the new typeface is visually stronger and the flame between both words works better than in previous renditions, also the new colour scheme feels a lot better to look at, the previous palette felt too harsh with the reds and yellows and the new subdued version is easier to look at.

February 3, 2016Brandon Barton No Comments

Workshop 3 – Further Logo Development

During my third workshop I decided to further explore logo variations, I tried to apply previous versions to some documentations and the shape and size of the logo wasn’t compatible with some of the output formats.

The element I decided to keep from my first logo was the typography, I felt as though this captured the feeling of the company I was going for, it felt rough and cartoony, similar to the proposed IP I would be creating. The new element to this logo was a vector created of a fire, I took inspiration from a camp-fire safety website, the symbol looked fun and something I could use an iteration of in my own work. After playing around with it though it felt too out of place and I personally didn’t like it.

I decided rather than keeping the features of the flame I would try removing them and play with the idea of typography around it. The new logo is a potential design out of more that I’ll make which I feel could be used or at least altered to be a final logo for my company. The next step I’ll take with my logo will be taking features from my first logo and trying to integrate them further with my new logo.

The inspiration for my fire sprite came from the website:

Fire

February 3, 2016Brandon Barton No Comments

Typography for Entropia

Creating the initial brand and name for my company I took it upon myself to research typography and the importance of said type, this was vital in being able to create a concise brand with high attention to detail by seeing how it’s done in industry. The same thing applies to creating a game and any other medium which requires Type to convey a message, which is why I’m further researching typography which can be applicable to Entropia my proposed IP for Campfire Studios.

I decided to look at free fonts relating to the theme’s my game will deal with. Entropia as mentioned before will be focused around a sole survivor of an unspecified pandemic whereby the world is in a post-apocalyptic state, the games theme’s will highlight the beauty of nature reclaiming what was once dominated by people along with various other elements. The focus however will mainly be nature reclaiming the world, using this knowledge I decided to look for natural/nature fonts.

I used the website http://www.fontspace.com and just searched the key term, Nature Fonts. I found 4 good examples which all have strengths of their own, I aim to evaluate them and decide on at least 2 to try and apply them to work on my game poster.

The 4 fonts I picked all have different qualities to them which I like, the first font Instinto is very reminiscent to me of the font used in the game The Last of Us. It’s clear, concise and bold, it feels like a stamp marking the authority of the game without the need to look fancy or try too hard, it’s also easily legible on any background which is a huge benefit without the need to take too much extra consideration on the overall look of the poster.

The 2nd font in the list is Ashes-Ashes, it has a rough look to it which is somewhat burnt out, it could be thematically appropriate for the game and some of the themes within it which is why I chose it. The negatives to a font like this are that it’d have to fit with the poster of the game, the visual themes within the poster will have to reflect why I chose this font meaning extra consideration will have to be given towards my concept art and sketches for the game.

The 3rd font is called Rustic, overall I prefer the look and feel of this font to the others. The font is made to look similar to foliage and flowers but it’s still concise and gets the message across. The font will also look good with the idea I had for the poster where a person is emerging from a crumbling city where plants and tress are growing in the city. This font is the most likely contender to be used as my final choice, but without a comparison I’m still undecided.

The final font is called Logs, it uses a similar theme to Rustic however it looks far too cartoony and out of place for its application, I chose it at first for some variation in typography, but in comparison to the others it looks the most out of place.

The next step to take with the typography is to apply it to some concept art and see whether it flows as an overall piece or whether it looks jarring. If any of the fonts works then I wont have the need to do further research, however if not I’ll look at further examples which may be more applicable.

Bibliography:-

http://www.fontspace.com/lj-design-studios/instinto

http://www.fontspace.com/icedragon/ashes-ashes

http://www.fontspace.com/intellecta-design/rustic

http://www.fontspace.com/character/sketch-logs