OUAN503 - UCC Coffee, Looking at Fonts

A starting point for me before I created any type of logo or other material was looking into fonts that I could use to represent the brand through all of the different avenues that I'm exploring. Thinking about the type of look I wanted to go with at first, I decided I wanted a hand made approach. This includes rustic packaging, with an element of sustainability. To coincide with this I wanted to create a hand made, possibly hand drawn font. I collected a range of images in the form of an image board that represented good hand drawn type to me, with lots of different examples of what can be achieved and the different types that can be created. I wanted to look at the whole range of different levels of complexity that can be done using this technique. From simply writing letters in an interesting way to quite intricate script type writing, looking into these types of fonts and type faces that people have made gave me some valuable insight into what I could do for this project. I wanted to think more about the materials that could be used as well as the type of font, as this can often dictate how the type turns out. I liked what I had seen in terms of the intricate and visually appealing type. I thought something more imperfect might be a better choice for the rustic look that I had in mind.

When I saw the image at the bottom right of the image board that reads 'heart', it gave me the idea to make a font in a looser less refined way using a brush and paint or ink. Using a brush meant I could get a dry brush effect or alternatively if I decided that thick, bold lettering was what I wanted then this would also be the way to go because it's quite easy to control the weight of the stroke by pushing down on the brush and creating a thick line with the ink. I wanted to create a new font from scratch so I tried to not look at any references as much as possible as I started drawing the letters. I didn't start the alphabet with A, B, C etc. Instead I decided to start with the letters from the name of the brand; 'Grand Cafe'. By doing this I could have a font that I liked for the logo and build the rest of the letters around the style I had achieved for the main words. I experimented a lot with the brush and probably tried twenty times to actually create a few letters I liked. Eventually I created some letters that suited what I was going for, they had a dry brush effect on them but were solid for the most part. I liked it quite a lot because it was neat and worked collectively as a font, but also had a certain charm and reached the type of rustic lettering I was hoping to use. Below is the full alphabet of letters that were created to act as a font for the branding process. Producing it like this meant that I could select letters where I needed them to spell out logos, phrases and other sections of type that were to be included in all of the promotion and branding work. In reflection I would have liked to look at creating a range of fonts that 'could' have worked as strong type faces for the brand. It would have been useful to have a range to use, and I've noticed through some of the research into packaging I did that sometimes there can be three or four different fonts on a piece of packaging, which can look really good as long as they work together and it makes the packaging feel a lot less simplified.

Also below is the brand name, 'Grand Cafe' spelt out using the font I created. I think it works quite well when they're lined up next to each other. I had to do some slight adjusting digitally so that all of the betters were more or less exactly the same height when shown in a row like this. I also played around with the amount of dry brushing that was visible and took some away from some areas and added some in elsewhere where I thought it was needed. Overall I'm relatively happy with the way the type I created turned out and am looking forward to putting it into practice onto promotion packaging, logos, and video.