OUGD504: Type Design, A Process, Dalton Maag

In today's session we had a talk from Stuart Brown from Dalton Maag. Before today I was unaware of who Dalton Maag were despite having seen their work all over the place as they have worked alongside some well known brands. One company they have worked alongside are the BBC, today Steward Brown talked through the process they went through to get to the final typeface design that they use today. 

Information I have found on the Dalton Maag website about this project.

• Work with interest group so the right people are working on the project
• Work with what the client wants (look at their existing brand font to gather information)
• They use a gallery of images that relate to the core value of the organisation and the team will then choose the ones most suited to the brand
• They create something called a font grid with font cards, where they gather together the characteristics needed and choose which font best suits this
• The team will then re-visit the brief after completing workshops- this is when they will discuss ideas/create sketches and begin to digitise the work
• There are legibility considerations that go into this process also
• The BBC wanted legibility between a capital I and a lowercase l
• They found Helvetica spacing too tight
• They wanted open counters and a humanist design

PROCESS:

• Begin to draw in poststrip, the outline of the letter and notes that go alongside it
• They use true type for the final delivery of the font
• They begin to consider things like light vs bold
• Will provide the client with a 'weight test' to see how the various font weights work
• Explore the details, softer edges or angle of terminal
• After this the kerning will be considered- they may reduce or increase the space
• After all of this the engineering side is considered as the font needs to work on all platforms

File types:

- Desktop: TTF

- Web: EOT/ TTF/ WOFF/ WOFF2

- App: TTF

WORKSHOP TASK:

After the talk had finished we then began a small workshop task...

OPTICAL PRINCIPLES:

• Contrast- think about thick and thin as it is imitating the hand written
• Ensure application of process is correct
• Take the weight out of vertical and horizontal
• Stroke widths- straights and rounds (rounds need to be thicker)
• Overshoot- give them compensation on the x-height or baseline

Finally we were given the task to choose a piece of paper with a word with missing letters on, it was then our job to sketch out the missing letters but ensure they were all drawn correctly.

My word was 'explainer', typography has always been one of my week points of graphic design so this task proved really difficult for me and for me to get my head around it. I think this is my best attempt at completing the word and this task has made me aware that I am quite unfamiliar of the typography terminology and thats why I perhaps struggled so much. This is definitely something I need to research into further, especially during this project as we are creating a publication and mine will bring in elements of typography that will need to be carefully considered.