OUGD502 - Studio Brief 1 - Guest Speaker - Stuart from Dalton Maag

Stuart from Dalton Maag 

Type Design: A process 

They conduct a stearing group at the beginning of the design process. This is a kick off session / workshop to find out what the client wants and to gather information about this. Images are shown to the client to see which they associate with their brand values the most. On the back of each image their is a typographic value. They also use the Font square which has Trust, Formal, Approachable and Novel on each side. 

When creating a typeface their are legibility considerations. There needs to be definition between the characters. 

All letters are drawn in postscript which allows the letters to to be adjusted through the use of nodes. Using a true type outline is useful for screen as this always shows the end product.

The letters a, e, h, i, n, o, p, t, v from the alphabet contain all the forms in the alphabet so by working these out the rest of the typeface can be constructed.

They also create the uppercase version. The original design is always designed in normal weight, from this light and bold are then constructed. The rest of the weights in-between can then be filled in. They then continue to make the full character set and punctuation. Using interprelation between weights allows others to create new weights.

Kerning is the space between characters.

Making type is 50 % engineering with the type needing to work across all platforms. Different codes do different things to how the type functions.
Hinting is used to adjust how pixels function. 

Desktop uses TTF files
Web uses EOT, TTF, WOFF, WOFF2 files
App uses TTF files

Optical Principles 

Type aims to imitate the handwritten. The contrast in type comes from the tool used to create the letters. Horizontals need the weights taking out. The stroke weight on the O is heavier to compensate. The curved elements overshoot to compensate.