SCAD
October 15, 2020
made a fun little typeface for class and named it after 'dynamite' a song by bts… stream dynamite everyone!! there were some true blood, sweat, and tears that went into this project. never underestimate any font or typeface, ever! take a look below to see all the sketches that didn’t make the cut. special shoutout to my bestie, roshni, for helping me fill in some of the letters as I was dragging myself through the sketches!
graphic design, type design
typography
illustrator
The goal of this project was to select one module and create a whole alphabet while adhering to a grid.
Before starting this project I did some quick Google searches to learn about the main components of a specimen sheets. I noticed that there was a lot of creative freedom in putting them together. Some common themes I saw in all of them are enlarged letters to show details, the full alphabet written down, examples, paragraphs, sometimes there are decorative aspects.
To help me jumpstart my ideation process, I first started by sketching out different versions of the letter A using circular, square, and rectangular modules. I quickly realized that I was not encompassing a diversity of typographic letter elements, such as lower case letters, bowls, shoulders, etc. So, to help fuel my ideas I created a quick system of randomizing a letter lower/upper, a module, and grid size. This helped me save a lot of time and create as many styles of letters as possible to choose from. Sometimes, I really liked what I created so I would create a few extra letters using that style of get a better idea of what a full alphabet would look like.
Ultimately, my final typeface choice was an angular set following a few rules: all of the letters fit perfectly into a 10x10 grid, the letters are made of non overlapping circular modules, the main stroke of each letter is diagonal and 3 modules thick, the angles of letters are filled in corners, and the bowls and shoulders of letters are empty corners to give rounded off feeling.
In the end, I slightly altered a few of the letters on my computer, but generally most of the letters looked as they look in my sketches. I didn't decided the name of my font until the very end when I began creating specimen sheets. At that time, the song 'Dynamite' by BTS had recently released and the typeface reminded me of the groovy feeling of the song so I named my typeface after that song!
