Alphabet Soup - Compact Typeface - Illustrator

Having already produced 10 compact letters – see Alphabet Soup – Studio Brief 1 – I began to produce them in illustrator. When I had produced these letters in Illustrator, it was apparent that they were all slightly different sizes, making them difficult to layout. Simultaneously to this I also started hand drawing the other letters needed to complete the alphabet. I produced a couple of examples of each letter so I could choose the one I thought looked the most ‘compact’. I produced these in a 40mmx40mm square to ensure that all of the could be laid out easily.

Whilst producing the other letters I decided to redesign the whole typeface, creating all the letterforms within a compact 40mmx40mm square. This meant that all the letters were the same size and because it was a square shape it added to the compact feel of the typeface.

Once I had drawn out all of the individual letterforms I scanned them into the computer so they could be imported into Adobe Illustrator. With them imported it enabled me to trace around the letters, creating vector letters.

The brief dictated that the final printout of the typeface must be A1 so after I had created the letters in Illustrator I transferred them onto an A1 document and changed the layout.

 

With the typeface in Illustrator it also allowed me to experiment with the appearance, showing only the outline of the letters to see what effect that would have.