Student Work
Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator
Assignment:
Choose an existing font and abstract it to make new abstract glyphs in place of the old ones. Create all capitals, lowercase and numbers.
Create either a pdf or booklet going over the history of the original font, your process, and the full abstracted glyph set. Include applications of your new abstract font on existing material where the original font was. Include your own original applications using your glyphs.
Process:
This was a really interesting assignment. Pulling apart an existing font to abstract it was both complicated and satisfying. I chose the font Bradley to use for this assignment, which is a classic black letter from 1895.
I thought this font had interesting shapes that I would have fun playing with, since it’s based on hand lettering. I tried out many methods of abstraction, settling on three main approaches that I was considering.
The third approach was the most successful, and the method used to create the full font set. Changes were made from the initial approach, and symmetry was integrated into the glyphs to help balance them out.
This approach uses consistent pill shapes to contain the new abstracted glyphs. The letter form is placed inside the pill shape, negative space that has been made is pulled apart, dissected and rearranged inside a new pill shape. Then it’s punched out once more using minus front, and a new abstract glyph appears.
Product
Bradley is such a beautiful but unusual font that’s based on hand lettering. It lent itself well to this assignment.
The full set is reminiscent of stained-glass windows, which were a renewed interest for the 19th century, around the time period that Bradley was originally released.
This is why I went with the name Cathedral, which is also where the aesthetic for the booklet came from.
