Modular Type - One-Day Workshop

This workshop helped me to understand the importance of communicating and discussing in collectives as well as splitting the work to be able to create a harmonizing typeface in a short period of time.

The main brief told us to create 62 glyphs (alphabet upper and lower case, numbers) using specific shapes from a kit.

The first rule that we had to follow was to include all different shapes from this kit. We started our work by dividing all glyphs by 12 group members. For this task we just had to design the uppercase letters as well as the numbers. Each of us had to create 3 different letters/ numbers. 

I came up with designs for the numbers 7, 8 and 9. 

Because of the short period of time that we had to observe it was important to focus and do not get lost in the design of one letter. I managed my time well so I was able to experiment with a couple designs for each number. 

Looking at our groups outcome I liked the unique letters. Evaluating the whole typeface I realized that we would have to talk more about the layout and design so that our letters would harmonize better. However, because we used the same shapes and colours our typeface looked nice already.

Afterwards we were told to design a lower case alphabet. This time I had to design the letters w, x and z.

Because of the fact that the letters have to harmonize as one typeface our collective decided to include the negative space, too. Regarding to that our lowercase letters harmonize as one typeface more than the uppercase letters which we created earlier.

Then we got another brief which told us to design all of the 62 glyphs by using only two shapes. Those letters also have to fit in a grid that was given to us.

The letters and numbers ended up to be very abstract. The importance was to think of characteristics of each letter so the brain would automatically fulfill a letter/ number by seeing only two shapes in the right order.

I realized that this task was even tougher than the one before. It is easier to include rather more shapes than to forgo some needed ones.

After that I could refine any letters or numbers from the whole day using the amount of shapes that I want to.

Finally, I designed a design sheet for todays task including the collective work as well as my own refined but still abstract numbers.