Creating Letterforms in a Digital World: The Design and Delivery of a Font

Abstract

I have always regarded font creation as an area of design that is highly specialized, requiring great attention to detail, and using highly skilled, hand drawn techniques to achieve the ultimate end result. While these prospects may still hold true in many respects, technological advancements have brought about great change to the overall process of design. As technology has evolved, so too have the methods of production for font and typeface design. New applications offer a multitude of interesting ways to create and design fonts. Over time, these methods of production have become increasingly more obtainable for the public and in some cases, simplified for the basic, non-designer. As a result, an increasing amount of users, both trained and untrained now have access to font design programs and applications. This project will examine the practice of font design, in both a historical context and through current trends, and will then apply this knowledge to a current software solution, in order to describe the current techniques of the creation process. In addition to this, each step of the process will be documented in order to provide a greater understanding of what is involved when learning the current process of font design. As a result of this study, the ultimate objective of this project will be the final creation of a fully realized and functional font. A downloadable version of the font design for this project can be accessed through the link below: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZODa_kNn2yyYpP6PbtwnG4mYp6MgMTuq/view?usp=sharing