Abstract

My objective for this project was to create 26 letter forms and a two-sided poster specimen for a versatile display font of our own design. The font was to be inspired by vernacular, street culture and graphics, past or present. Our source of inspiration had to come from commercial hand-drawn or hand-painted signage. 

This typeface was influenced by found vintage signage from the entrance of an antique theatre. I found this vintage signage to be appealing because it was mature, clean, and legible which. 

     The Leade is a serif, all caps font, consisting of twenty-six letterforms. It is a legible, clean, clear, sophisticated and functional font with many distinct features. There are three different weighted strokes throughout this twenty-six letter alphabet, which helps give each character contrast and variation. All twenty-six characters are fairly tall which gives the alphabet an overall slender feel. A unique characteristic within this alphabet that sets it apart from most others, is the raised arm, bar, and crossbar within the letters B, E, F, H, P, R, and Z. 

     The process behind the design of this typeface included; early pencil sketches on grid paper, digital redrawing and refinements on the computer in Illustrator, and final formatting, spacing and kerning adjustments in Fontographer. During this process, I struggled with smoothing out the curvature and also making sure the weight within each character was similar and constant throughout the whole alphabet.  After many critiques and constant revising, I eventually found the uniformity and clarity that I had been searching for in a typeface.