Studio Brief 02 - Production

Having established my bespoke typeface's visual language, today I translated the aesthetic across all 26 letters of the alphabet, from a-z. Below is the initial, full alphabet:

Once I had applied the gradient-driven visual language of the typeface to the whole alphabet, I identified problematic letters that were harder to perceive and identify - these were the characters with descenders. The lowercase letterforms of g, j, p, q, and y visually rely on the descenders to be perceptually understood by the mind. Without descenders, the follow issues are present:

• The g and q look the same as their alternating descender styles cannot be seen.
• Without it's descender, the j looks the same as the letter i to it's left.
• The letter y appears the same as the letter v.
• The p, without its descender, is hard to perceive.

In order to resolve this issue, I had to find a way to make these letters' descenders visible without causing damage to the established, cohesive visual language. In an attempt to rectify the problem, I supplied additional gradients, this time starting from the bottom of the type going up so that the descender-ends could be perceived.

Although the descenders were now identifiable, the darkness of the ends effected the cohesion of the 26 letterforms and made the characters in question un-balanced in comparison to the majority. I then changed the descender-specific gradient to start in a lighter tone so that the weight could be lifted and in turn re-callibrate the visual language and return it to its previous state of cohesion.

By simply lifting the tone of the descender gradient, I believe I have been able to resolve the problematic characters and in doing so produce a harmonious and consistent set of letterforms. I would like to extend the visual language to numerals also, however this is where the treatment will end. I believe punctuation, due to format, scale and placement, would not adapt to the gradient visual as the full letterforms have, and therefore will take the type aesthetic no further. 

Below are the bespoke numerals: