New Asemic Script #3

Quite a while has passed since I recorded my progress. This has been ongoing for some time now – I am not posting as regularly as I should. Having established a number of forms in a favourable calligraphic line, I chose to explore other line qualities in order to see if the forms ‘held up’ to treatments they weren’t designed to handle, and to see if anything interesting happened. Although I apply a more thorough methodology to my work, I am not afraid of opening other doors to see what’s behind.

I decided to create my own lines rather than use the software presets – remember I’m using Adobe Illustrator here – my lines are in red above their applications. So I opened some doors and was largely appreciative of how most forms retained their basic dynamic, but was not overly excited by the results. Always worth a look though.

Now it’s time for a small digression. I would like to admit here that I have not always been an advocate of the ‘see what happens’ school of design as many of my old students will attest. Having been trained as a designer before the Apple revolution, I was schooled in the ‘thinking things through, sketching things out, mocking things up’ methodology, which was ultimately aimed at properly refining the idea – not the imagery, but was inevitably used as an economical measure – to avoid expensive mistakes and changes late in the process. Computers have pretty much done away with this. I can’t begin to tell you how disheartened I have been by seeing students trying out every font in alphabetical order, rather than making an informed or even intuitive decision. (Deep breath…)

As I have matured I have finally acknowledged the convenience that the ‘modern’ (good grief, I feel old at 45!) digital design process and can really appreciate what just happened just now. It was not that long ago that the production of this stage would have been so time consuming and costly that you would have been publicly humiliated for even suggesting it in a studio environment.

Now, before anyone gets the chance to butt in (the joys of blogging!) I wish to make it very clear that this type of process is no substitute for thinking, deciding and committing to a process, going on to refine and develop to the end. Having already formulated my approach, tried and tested my choices and decisions, I can now appreciate the convenience the software allows.

NOTE TO STUDENTS: Never let the dog take you out for a walk…

Phew! Glad I got that off my chest. I hope you managed to get some popcorn and a comfort break before the main feature resumed.

Back to the calligraphic line. Having created a handful of glyphs I began to compose lines, adding new forms and ligatures in response to the new structures emerging. At this point I noticed a number of Arabic inspired forms emerging which pleased me greatly. I was particularly interested in the possibilities of cross-line ligatures:

Well, there’s only one way to deal with an itch and that is to scratch; some careful maneuvering allowed several other lines drop or reach up:

This was a crucial stage. I had grown a little ‘glyph-blind’ and really couldn’t judge whether this had worked as I had hoped it would, so I decided to take it elsewhere and look at it a different way, by digitally applying it to an old manuscript page, adding borders and some inter-line noodling:

The verdict? Well, like the curate’s egg; good it parts. I think the main body of the script works – there is still some refinement to go – but the vertical ligatures are awkward, ugly even. But the inter-line noodling was also interesting…

I was regularly getting samples off-screen to check scale and composition, and couldn’t resist printing a sample off onto handmade paper:

On revisiting the glyphs to remove the undesirable ligatures, I began to look at the details – in particular where lines meet or converge. This was also an opportunity to tidy things up a little by converting the lines to paths and manually making adjustments to make more visually pleasing union points:

So it was back a few steps, lose the ligatures, and close up the lines. This, I think is much more elegant:

After this time consuming and ‘oh-so pernickety’ stage, it was time to see a block of text:

Remember that noodling in between the lines earlier? That was created just to add something that would suggest a small sub-script, or even something similar to Jewish micrography. It was created from a number of smaller strokes, some taken directly from the main script, and others drawn using a graphics tablet. I decided to have a look at that in isolation from the main script and was generally quite pleased. I thought it looked a little less formal, so grouped lines together to suggest verses.

Asemic poetry? Poetry translated into asemic script? Or a just a streamlined shorthand? I think this has further mileage – a linear script is almost entirely dependent upon the subtlety of its curves, dips and peaks…

New Asemic Script #2

Following my initial ideas and developments of a new asemic script, I made a symbol from parts of the lines I had established previously:

I had a notion that this looked a little ‘uncial’ but was quite encouraged by this – it would be interesting to see if this falls into line or whether I can corrupt and push it further.

Uncial scripts are are early Latin and Greek styles from the 3rd to 8th centuries and can be identified by their rounded structures and flowing strokes:

I put together a set of pieces culled from those initial figures:

With these I began to look for natural alignments and flow:

I composed a few more ‘characters’ and introduced a horizontal stroke. I say horizontal very loosely.

And went back to the first test character, making a number of variations on the theme:

After putting these characters together in different orders, I came across an awkward meeting that didn’t look calligraphic:

And created a more natural union that suggests a tight loop that might naturally occur in the flow of writing. This presented a new set of possibilities; characters with different terminals dependent upon, say their position in a word or line, as well as proximity to other specific characters. Hmm.

At this point I went into overdrive, trying lots of component parts and considering joins, combinations and ligatures. This is what my working file looked like:

and what I have produced so far is looking encouraging. The top shows the fine monoline, the middle a 10pt monoline and at the bottom the custom 20pt calligraphic stroke.

Ok. I have some basic structures. It’s really time to see what happens and where these may lead…

New Asemic Script #1

I have been sketching out ideas for the next installment of my book series for some time now and have come to a few good points on which to start. The first is the development of an entirely new asemic script that will hopefully guide the direction for the whole piece.

Let me share my thinking and some of my process  with you. I have created several asemic writing systems before, each from very different starting points; the first was an automatic, handwritten script, developed over years of filling up pages in dull meetings:

This led to the development a set of  formalised glyphs, based upon a jaunty 45° angle directly lifted from the hand written script:

These two variants were the initial inspiration for the first book  ‘Four Fools’ and were used throughout:

As I was putting the finishing touches to Four Fools I decided to continue to develop the theme and aim for a series of four books. Not long after the first book was published and began to sell, I began to think about how the next book might work and I decoded to introduce some different writing systems, glyphs and symbols. Rather than begin on paper I set out exploring early ideas on screen. This one was inspired by old punched tickets:

Encouraged by this, I began exploring some more geometric, grid based linear forms that seemed to suggest a numbering or accounting system:

Whilst exploring the geometric grid ideas, I introduced a line weight difference favouring the horizontal strokes which led to this:

The gridded forms had worked well, but were visually repetitive, so I elected to take a less rigid approach. I still retained the geometric shapes, but began to formulate a ‘kit of parts’ approach that yielded something a little more natural that what I had produced previously:

I was pleased with this but also felt that it had some more to give. It was some time after whilst working on another project that I hit on the idea of converting this ultra geometric style to something that appeared to have some history. After failing to apply any convincing roman serifs, I tried the ‘old typewriter’ treatment, using some hi-res samples from a 1920 document and a huge amount of cut’n'paste, as well as too many hours of PhotoShop editing:

All of these were used in the second book ‘Pabulum’ along with the first two and a fair bit of brushwork.  This was even used the cover!

The next one was inspired by more Arabic structures and was originally a lot more complex than this – which was illegible at the sizes needed for book print, so this is a a highly simplified version that I think I will continue to develop at some point:

The more observant amongst you may have spotted that this also occasionally appears in the blog header…

Whilst I am very pleased with Pabulum, I feel that the next one needs to be simpler, with fewer scripts, and explore some more formal compositions and approaches. I also want to focus on the flow and texture of a script rather than add more grid based glyphs.

This brings us up to date. I have decided to develop another script – to me meaning something derived from the hand written – so I started filling sketchbooks again but found myself struggling to move away from the style I used originally. In order to find new inspiration, I tried using different media. Whilst this gave me some interesting and ultimately useful results, I was still no further in establishing a starting point.

Over the Christmas period I had downloaded a number of iPad drawing apps, some free form and some grid-based and a rather basic calligraphic one called Sketji by Aerfish. This is a simple tool – imagine a large Chinese calligraphy brush loaded with black ink:

Well this works just like that. A fast movement creates a thick stroke and slowly create a thin one. Refreshingly, this is all it does; no unnecessary bells and whistles, in-app upgrades or special effects. It does allow you to save your images though and gives you the option of high or low resolution too! I absolutely love it! It is an excellent tool for my purposes and I have wasted no time putting it to good use:

These were placed into Adobe Illustrator and converted to paths using the livetrace tool:

I started by using these as templates to see what the raw lines would look like, and ended up just focusing on a line and ellipse. The grid was created at a slight angle – just 5° from vertical to prevent me from exaggerating further as I wanted something much more subtle than my original 45° script. I kept the ellipse at the angle I drew it:

Though I was happy with the angle I was concerned that the ellipse was too condensed and would be problematic at small sizes. With that in mind I placed a smaller ellipse inside aligned to one side to really force the issue. The positioning was arbitrary here – I just wanted to look at the proportions and be able to visually gauge when I thought that a balance had been achieved:

After a fair bit of nudging and tweaking, I thought that the bottom middle was looking somewhere comfortable for development. The next stage was to make a proto-glyph; something to push around further and try a few diversions…

These simple structures will allow me to consider a range of structural and compositional factors. They may or may not be recognisable by the end, but right now they are like single celled organisms emerging from the primordial soup with only the faint whiff of evolution in the air.

My first port of call is the quality of line, as previous experience has taught me that this can have a profound influence on everything that follows (the first script was originally developed as a monoline and worked well until the moment I changed the line weight and style – pretty much every glyph was manually then adjusted by hand!) The standard calligraphy brushes in Illustrator are useful to start with to check out variations in width and angle of stroke:

But is is when the options palette is employed that the style can be adjusted exactly to where you want it. These settings give me a semibold stroke, decent visual definition in the stresses, as well as a friendly, brush-line roundness to the terminal of the stroke:

Then I did a scaling test along with a narrower 10pt stroke. This showed some areas that will need attention, especially at the points of convergence where the curves meet the upright strokes, but I am getting a good feeling about this:

I’ll keep you posted…

Tickets Please!

The Lestaret Corporation has recently been granted a franchise on one of the divisions of Hell and as of May 2012 will be issuing tickets for the new system of entry (for a small administrative fee, of course.)  This will involve standing in lots of queues, and the continual listenening to the entire output of Justin Bieber. Not big changes then.

Just to demonstrate the levels of intense toil that goes into producing each ticket, here is a quick overview:

1. Taking reference from a classic format, all measurements were accurately taken.

2. A batch of sturdy card was trimmed to an oversized dimension (10mm all round,) for better handling during printing.

3. A template was created in order to gain an accurate position of the print. The centre was trimmed to show the maximum print area and used to overlay the makeready prints.

4. Printing. Well, not quite that simple. First the type needs composing – Univers 45 and 68 centrally aligned – this took around 45 minutes in all, particularly in the positioning of the type in the chase. This was then printed on the Adana 5/3 in a dark green. A day later, the numbering box was installed and the tickets were sequentially numbered in a deep red.

5. The top and bottom are then trimmed. I set up a temporary jig on my cutting mat to speed this up.

6. The tickets were then perforated using a small perforating wheel bought from a local craft store. Again, a temporary jig was used for this process.

7. Holes were punched with a hand held single hole puncher, using a cardboard jig to ensure consistency of position.

8. Edges removed to enhance the reveal the ticket! 

This is a lot of effort for such a small bit of ‘stuff’ but I like it!

The Christmas Post

The Golden Age Of Photography

Take a look at these little fellows. A small collection of carte de visite by early commercial photographers.

The albumen prints are pasted onto thick board, some gilt-edged, and are richly decorated with type on the reverse:

These were produced at the time when commercial photography was becoming more widely accessible and affordable to the English middle classes, who wished to emulate the aristocracy by commissioning portraits. At Portraits in oils were rather expensive, time consuming affairs, the opportunity to commission a portrait using newly fashionable photographic processes – often having them painted over to resemble an oil painting – was just the thing…

More images of all the cards can be viewed here.

Morning!

I’m cutting a few new typographic lino blocks and decided to do a dry run and emboss the first one, just to get a visual check on the details…

I’m pretty happy with the results, so it’s off to print:

I’m going to run a magenta over some of the lighter ones, out of register so that the colours ‘swim’ a bit. I printed these off a few days later:

Top Deck (3)

…The next stage is to plan out the layout for the cards and run some set up prints…

The first part of this is locking up the type into the chase. This is more fiddly than you’d expect, and involves a fair bit of trial and error, inserting tiny slivers of metal to balance up the lines, then blocks of wood and metal (called furniture) to pack everything out:

As this was a test run, it really did not matter too much, but I quite enjoy the setting up so spent quite a while making sure everything as all set tight – if you look at the image on the left the ‘a’ is slightly lower, dure to some uneven packing, but a bit of finagling soon sorted this out. This adjustment is a matter of about one tenth of a millimetre…

And then to set up for printing. The forme was locked into the pressbed and inked up and a few test prints were made onto the cards – just to get the position right – I discarded these as soon as I knew that I could run prints at about the right place on the card. More fine tuning can be done later. 

I only printed six cards and found that I was very pleased with the first sighting, but unhappy with the quality of the print.

This is the first time I have printed on coated stock – card with a slightly shiny smooth surface and I think my set up works better on thicker, uncoated stock. Also the impression appears very slightly smudged, suggesting that I may be applying too much pressure – a lighter touch next time.

As I say, I am pleased with the general direction – clean and minimalist, but practical too.

As well as improving the print quality, I also want to work on the typesetting too – I like type that optically aligns (my students will testify to this!) and I need to apply the same standards here that I do on-screen, especially in the vertical alignment:

More work to do!

Top Deck (2)

My last post on letterpress was a little vague. Well, a lot vague really, so I guess I should explain a little further. I have been considering some possible new projects, mainly ‘old school’ letterpress but different from the short run abstracts that I have been doing up to now.

After a few days sketching out ideas I decided to make some typographic playing cards. Let me say this here first; this is not a new idea. Many people have made very a nice job of this, these people included:

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/9353/typographic-playing-cards.html


http://design-fetish.blogspot.com/2010/01/typographic-playing-cards.html


http://p22.com/products/deck08.html


http://www.behance.net/gallery/Typographic-Playing-Cards/1127553


http://fontgear.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/typography-playing-cards/

But rather than follow them into the same territory and produce another set of typographic cleverness I decided to opt for a much simpler approach. Also, as I was going to produce them all by hand (and not farm them out to a commercial printer) these would be made in a very limited quantity, giving them a different status than a standard deck.

Letterpress playing cards are also nothing new. There are some lovely sets out there – I may just buy a set of these:

http://www.greenchairpress.com/index.cgi?id=0029

and I have been ogling these decks too:

http://www.railwaystationpress.com/


http://www.michelleghiotti.com/1297123/CIRQUE-PLAYING-CARDS


http://www.mesart.com/artworkps.jsp.que.artwork.eq.21213.shtml

There is a space for a different approach amongst these fine examples and so decisions were made to discard traditional conventions and typographic expectations. The first thing to go were the suit symbols. Yes, you read that right; playing cards without the suit symbols. Next were the numbers. Well, the figures at any rate – all were now to be spelled out fully

I had explored using Times New roman (mainly because I have a soft spot for the italics) and Rockwell because I have a decent number of weights and sizes, but in the spirit of the minimal approach I was taking I eventually opted for Univers Bold at 10pt.

I purchased a batch of pre-cut blank playing cards; blank both sides – I considered getting some ready printed with a pattern on one side, changed my mind when I saw this copper top block on eBay:

At the perfect size for me…

I’ll show the full image later on – this was just a quick test print!

The next stage is to plan out the layout for the cards and run some set up prints…

Top Deck!

“If you like to gamble, I tell you I’m your man
You win some, lose some, it’s all the same to me
The pleasure is to play, it makes no difference what you say
I don’t share your greed, the only card I need is…”

10pt Univers Bold. Nice.