Getting Started: Font design

How to implement Font morphing

How do I achieve font distortion? I think it's a matter of great concern to designers who have just come into contact with font design. Here I just want to share a point of view, each person's ideas and ways of implementation are different. What I am introducing here is a set of methods that I have summarized in my own design process for reference.

Back to the question just now, I'll answer it in three steps.

In what way do you implement

What is the process of implementation

What should the design process avoid

1 before you start designing fonts

Personal habits are painted on draft paper, the structure of the font and the layout of the first quickly stereotypes. Look for a more appropriate solution from a list of options, then take a picture and put it in the illustrator for the original stroke organization. Illustrator is a highly efficient graphical drawing software that can easily help you accomplish a variety of tasks such as fillet, symmetry, tilt, isometric distribution, and assignment minus. Another trick is that you can outline the strokes of the font, quickly use the basic font to deformation.

2 after the completion of the prototype, you can step into the details of the decoration.

This time can refer to similar excellent font bridge differences structure, adjust each word stroke distribution and center of gravity balance.

After selecting the style of the font, give the font an appropriate visual comb. For example, Word and word spacing, strokes between the spacing, the overall shape of the tilt angle, special place to do fillet processing and so on. Let the entire font have a consistent visual rule inside.

Example 1: The vertical strokes of the left end of the fillet processing, then the following e under the same rule, do the stroke at the end of the rounded corner processing.

Example 2: Use the intelligent guides in the illustrator to draw the vertical, horizontal, and 45° guides to align the strokes and adjust the spacing. The round angle processing is realized by using the circle intersection minus to achieve the stroke angle.

Contrast with different sizes, fully consider the details of the font in different sizes can be displayed in place. This section suggests making 3-5 practical application sizes as a reference.

Put the font in the actual application environment, do the details and color matching adjustment. It is recommended to consider the style of the page to determine texture, color type. If necessary, it can be used as background foil.

3 What should be avoided in the design process

As much as possible to ensure the readability of the text. After all, commercial design, to take into account the majority of people's cultural background, and graphics recognition capabilities.

Control the shoulder frame structure of the font to avoid the problem of unequal size, uneven distribution and uneven stroke. Examples in the lower left corner of the example, although the star shape to accommodate the "card" and "in", but instead let the font in the central area appears too dense and not breathable. Then look at the example on the right, the shape of the Star Hollow, and successive to the "in" horizontal stroke, so that the font strokes more compact and breathable.

Consideration should be given to the specific application environment and actual use dimensions.

Down to the introduction of this year's accumulated font design works. This is the theme word design for the Isux theme outreach activity in the winter of 2011. At that time the slogan of these 8 words felt a whole scalp tingling. Because it's quite complicated because of the process. Later in the outline of the font, and constantly manipulate strokes, found that the spacing of the font closer, more can reflect the meaning of integration. So I made strokes of the cut and fusion. Properly draw the strokes of the adjacent text, but let the literal look flow. In the process of seeing Isux "little chrysanthemum" logo, just think can also put the color into the inside. After a few drafts, it turns out that a complex literal can embed isux four letters inside. So the final draft became a bunch of strokes with letters ISUX.

To share this case is to introduce a quick and effective method. In the existing font, the combination of theme elements of the stroke deformation, to a certain extent, can meet the design needs, but also to save time costs.

At that time is the direct use of square black bold, because this period of activities is Huayi Brothers name, that is, add film elements-film, the stroke through the deformation, so that literally a succession. Second is the Huayi Brothers logo in the red application, the continuation of Huayi brand color, and finally put on the page to do light processing, improve the visual effects of fonts.

This part of the font design is for the channel of the name logo design. Uniform application of rough strokes, tilt and other rules. In view of the interest in font form, the graphic elements are added to enrich the font itself. At the same time with different sizes of the display effect, do strokes of the deletion, and spacing adjustment.

This part of the design is the pre-Olympic channel column logo design. In order for the final design to have motion characteristics, strokes are treated with a tilt and brevity. In addition, by staggered word level typesetting, but the whole literal more lively. Finally, the use of yellow and blue to highlight the feeling of youthful vitality.