Visual Literacy - The Anatomy of Type: Weight

In this session we focused on the weight of the letter and how changing that affected the form of the letter. Initially we looked at making our letters light, regular and bold. To do this, I drew out the original letter three times and, as it was regular adapted it to make it light and bold. When modifying a letter to make it either light or bold it is important to try and keep the letters on the same baseline and not close the space between each letter. If this happens the tracking must be adjusted so that the words are still legible and readable. The first set of letters I produced was a lowercase Helvetica b.

With the second set of letters we were told to produce the lightest possible A and the boldest possible A whilst keeping them legible and readable. The main forms and characteristics of the letter had to be maintained whilst the letter was manipulated.

For the next three tasks we were told to have one C as bold as we could make it and one C as light as we could make it.

When working with the Bs we were told to choose to make either the stem as bold as we could and the bowl as light as we could (the option I chose), or the opposite – the bowl as bold as possible and the stem as light as possible.

Finally we were asked to do the opposite with the As as we had done with the Bs.