OUGD403 Studio Brief 1 - Idea Generation

OUGD403 Studio Brief 1 - Idea Generation 

I began looking into what dynamic meant and created a mind map of different words and ideas that associated with 'dynamic.' Predominantly I found that movement and rhythm went best, therefore I will start to make up ideas of a typeface that has movement and is flexible. In addition I also thought about the dynamics of music, the loudness or softness of a note which conjures up ideas of different weighted bodies in the typeface to represent the different dynamics of music. After speaking to peers, I also found that 'versatile' is a another meaning for dynamic. This created ideas of creating a font that I could make completely versatile, so it could be suited to use on everything from an airplane to an antique shop. This made me realise in the end, how hard interpreting dynamic into a typeface could be as creating a versatile typeface is extremely hard.

 Futura      

- German typeface designer Paul Renner designed Futura in the mid-1920′s. Its geometric shapes were inspired by the Bauhaus, the German arts & crafts movement, which was the idea of bridging the gap between art and industry by combining crafts and fine arts, which associates strongly to me as a graphic designer. In addition Futura was designed while art movements such as Constructivism and Neo-Plasticism were emerging, which both move away from traditionalism and focus on geometric shapes and gribs, connected to the typeface as Futura uses simple geometric forms such as near perfect circles, triangles and squares. . Its characteristics include simple geometric forms (near-perfect circles, triangles and squares) and is based on strokes of near-even weight, which are low in contrast. This is most visible in the almost perfectly round stroke of the o. In the 1950’s and 1960’s it was commonly used in headlines and subheads in advertising, in addition Futura (and its variants) have become an extremely popular typeface for countless corporate logos, commercial products, films and advertisements for years, including Louis Vuitton, Red Bull and Domino's pizza. In 1969 the Apollo 11 astronauts left a commemorative plaque on the moon and its text was set in Futura.

For my initial idea of making Futura into a more dynamic typeface, I started to look more into Futura, its history and characteristics. I found that as it is a contemporary, modern typeface it would interesting in creating Futura more dynamic as it would give it a really unique look. However, it could also be restrictive as Futura uses geometric shapes and is very crisp. If I were to create a typeface with movement I don't think I could keep the geometric shapes and they are static and show no movement, this leads me to believe that Futura won't be recognisable at all once I manipulate it, but creating a typeface that is dynamic is my main objective.