Brief 2: Final Design Process for Cryptic Alphabet

Taking the Feedback on board, I questioned 'What is cryptic?'. I wanted to connect the context of the word 'Universe ' from my chosen font and adapt this into my theme.

Starting my research I came across this cryptic quote

I then researched into Space being a cryptic place which we were once didn't know existed. The idea of Space being an unclear, unknown place. I followed up this research by researching into cosmic rays within the Universe. Researching into health impacts which is a topic where people are unknown of until it is discovered.

Researching into theories, what we are told and made to believe. Questioning what is actually the truth?

I then came across newspaper articles about how the Universe is expanding due to Dark energy which no-one knew about until it was recently discovered. The concept of dark energy being an unclear thing, noone knows what dark energy looks like, just our creative perception creates the visualisation.

This then lead to supernovaes help measuring the universe. Supernovaes are exploding stars brighter than the sun. We are unsure of when the stars will explode. this lead to blocked gas clouds which reflect different coloured light within the atmosphere. I thought this would work well when designing my alphabet, perhaps I could incorporate the milky way aspect aswell.

Cosmic Rays then reminded me of lighting. I researched into these two elements and there is a connection. Cosmic rays from supernovaes create ice particles in the sky which produce produce large flashes of lighting. 

In my Sketchbook I have researched into newspaper articles about the universe.

Images of lightning from my sketchbook research. 

After this researched I realised that each element had a connection of creating a cycle. 

I then had the idea of the lines in lighting being jagged and irritated and applying that onto type.

A mini sample of a braking the rules 'a'

I developed this further by taking away elements from type.

The idea of irritating type and how we can still perceive it as type. The bottom line in particular mimics the idea of lighting with a slight disorientation. 

I then reflected back to the quote of applying the element of stars. Doing this I experimented with dots applying this to type. 

Again exploring with irritated lines and adapting the dot element to the typeface too.

I then experimented with Photoshop and applied a negative contrast. The idea of the 'e' being circled could signify the aspect of a supernovae. 

I then created a sample of applying the element of stars joining up with lines to signify the aspect of 'connection'. 

For my Final piece I decided to base it on lightning. Created the final piece on Illustartor, I broke up elements of the letterform influenced by my samples.

I incorporated the colour pink influenced through the lightning imagery. I also feel this incorporated a cryptic code aspect towards the letterforms. 

For my final outcome, I created the typeface from ‘Univers’ influenced by lightning in Uppercase. I broke up the lettering to create the idea of something being unclear, braking the rules.

During the feedback many people said it did not influence the idea of Space. My final outcome wasn’t influenced by space however that’s where my design process started which then lead to lightning.

The concept of vertical lines come from the idea of lightning. During my design process I had to be concise and ensure each letterform had a sense of a pattern which will connect when producing words.

The typeface included the first lines being positioned slightly lower. The only exception was the letter ‘K’ and ‘L’ emphasising the idea of the ascender. I incorporated this idea to contrast uppercase and lowercase addressing this idea of not following the rules as uppercase tend to be the same size (from baseline to Ascender).

In other letterforms with shorter terminals, the broken up elements created squares which reminded me of digital camouflage which connected to my initial idea process.

The ‘E’ and ‘F’ were more minimalistic and less broken up because when I was designing, the letter of the ‘E’ was unreadable as the terminals were short. So I redesigned these with less broken up elements to create a better understanding of the letter.