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'
hi roopa. interesting work. i like the way your analysis has got more refined as you go along. and i think it's good that you're doing lots of drawing and cutting out. i've found that really helps in understanding the differences in forms - actually drawing out the letter shape for yourself. don't know a lot about eric gill. but he was also a sculptor wasn't he? have you thought of going on to do something sculptural/3d to represent your findings - as a sort of homage to gill the typographer and sculptor?
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Clare....
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, there is a great deal to be learnt from cutting and tracing and cutting, repeatedly!
Yes, Eric G was a sculptor and a painter. That's a great idea - to pay homage to him in some sort of a 3D way. My book is based on his fonts anyway.... but maybe I will be allowed to change the brief and do a book on a sculptural interpretation? Hmmmmmmm