Simple Analysis by overlap

This one is quite simple. After trying out various different 'A's belonging to different typefaces, decided to do the same analysis with A's from the same font family. I decided to go for the font family of Gill Sans.
Figure 1. is achieved by folding the paper as shown in Fig.3 
I felt these analysis gave a really good sense of the volume of the letter.

Analysis Diagrams

This was basically an exercise in analytically studying the peak of an A. I took a few 'A's of varying shapes and sizes, cut them up along the base of their cross bar and studied the resultant top half. The images with the dots are not random! They are very careful and meticulous analysis of some point of the letterform with the chosen 'A's as my reference. The typefaces used were (L to R across rows from top LH corner) : Century Gothic, Optima, Helvetica, Impact, Bauhaus 93, Baskerville, Lucida Calligraphy Italic, Monotype Corsiva, Harrington, Eccentric Std, American Typewriter, Lucida Blackletter and Scriptina.

Choosing various 'A's. 

Chopping the letter to define the area between the peak and the base of the cross bar

Various analysis diagrams resulting from comparing different parameters of the letterform

(These were quite inspired after reading Tufte's Beautiful Evidence, especially 'Dotdashplot' and '3DScatterplot'

Experimenting with Analysis Diagrams

'A' in Arial, Times New Roman, Futura, Snell, Impact and Eccentric (L to R)

After analyzing the area that defined the peak of the letter 'A', I was left with a bunch of analysis diagrams that were albeit interesting to look at, but didn't translate to anything but, well, just interesting digrams!

It was only when I compared the different diagrams by laying them on top of one another that they started giving me information that I could interpret. With this thought in mind, I decided to conduct a simple experiment.

I took the letter 'A' in 6 different typefaces, Arial, Times New Roman, Futura, Snell, Impact and Eccentric. I drew them at 100 pt font size, at which they were more or less of comparable height.

Then I took the peak as I had defined in my previous post. I repeated some of the analysis and then layered the resultant diagrams on top of each other. The result was : one image formed by 6 layers of information. The information was interesting, but the resultant images were much more exciting for me!

Fig.1

 

Basically I took the height of a letters and made a square out of it (height of letter x height of letter = resultant square). I then layered the squares on top of each other in different ways creating different images.

Again I did the same kind of diagramming, but this time with squares that were created, were done using the widths of the letters instead of the heights. The resultant images, obviously similar in nature, were completely different in appearance.

Fig.2

By comparing Fig.1 and Fig.2 we could interpret a lot of information what would not be as apparent by just looking at the letters. For example, we can safely conclude that for letters ('A' in this case) of the same height, the widths a lot less varied than the heights. The 'A' for Impact and Times New Roman, has a significant difference in height, but the widths are almost the same. Such interpretations and conclusions kept me quite busy for a while!

The Peak of an 'A':Part SP (for 'Starting Point')

 
For one of the tasks, we were meant to analyze parts of a letter. We could choose any part of any letter for our study. I chose the letter 'A' because 1) I spent waaaay too long staring at it that I never got to even the second letter, ie 'a' of the Aa Bb Cc patterned type sheet in front of me and 2) I was quite mesmerized with the various different different ways that two lines joined to form the 'peak' of the letter 'A'. So it was time to break it down. Literally.

I took the part of the 'A' between the cross bar and the peak and did a series of analysis diagrams on a bunch of different 'A's.

Tracing only the horizontal lines

Defining the area that I thought formed the peak

Outlining the shape of the triangle that formed the top part of the 'A'

so on and so forth.... 

(Quite a comprehensive online resource on parts of a letter can be found here)

Hand Rendering

I never quite put so much thought into writing my name!

The real task was to trace our names from a set of different typefaces that were provided so that we could 'feel' the letterforms. Also realize the importance of placement and spacing between the letters. I, as usual, ended up concentrating more on the tertiary task which was, to write out our names in such a way that it conveyed something about ourselves.
I love tracing! So the real task that was given, might as well have been a nice, gooey, warm, chocolate brownie! At the moment, I cannot quite remember which typefaces I used (annotation alert!), but I think they were Caslon for 'Roopa' and definitely Gill Sans for 'basu'. I used a classic serif and a classic san serif to convey my contradictions : strong but delicate, traditional but modern, or even dreamer AND a believer!
I centered my surname because I wanted to convey a 'strong base' that would visually 'hold me up'. I remember being torn about using a bigger font size for 'basu' to give 'Roopa' a bit more support. But then I remember discarding that idea because I wanted 'Roopa' to stand out much more than 'basu'. Overall, I remember wanting for it to have a balanced feel even though the typefaces used were different from each other.