Typeface Project
Communications Mini — Project 3 and 4 (Spread and Animation)
Part 1: Who is Lora?
The font that I got paired with was Lora, a modern serif font with calligraphic roots. My immediate response was that I noticed it was elegant, without feeling intimidating or overly rigid. It was smart and fun, the italics had a swift dynamism to it. It didn’t feel forced, it just seemed to fit.
Lora is extremely new compared to her counterparts. She isn’t breaking the bounds of typography nor is it hated and expunged from society. I think, like most good designs, Lora does her job in a subtle yet effective manner. She is quietly powerful and gracefully impactful in her own special way.
1. Initial Analysis
2. Essay Writing
Because Lora was such a new font, there was very little I could find about it online. I researched the designers, inspirations, history but ended up with a few facts and few examples of real-life uses.
I decided that I needed to personify the font in a way that also highlighted its key features, distinct style, and influences. I thought this would work well, especially since most of the real-life uses I came up with surrounded stories, books, and art essays. I noticed it was never the main font, but rather the font that was used to supplement another, thus showing its versatility.
I created the persona of a young woman, Lora, getting ready for her job working in a company (Cyreal, the company that produced the font). I wanted to highlight effortlessness, the ability to be used in multiple different ways for all kinds of projects, subtle contrast, elegance, and connection to historical calligraphic roots.
Link to the essay: here
3. Readability and Legibility
4. Thumbnails
5. Initial spreads
- adjust kerning and leading to reflect its elegance, it is still not completely readable
- highlight certain areas visually if you are trying to communicate an idea
- don’t turn the letters! they are already dynamic, let them stand tall and straight so you can introduce them well
- add depth with scale
- bring the proportions of the typeface to the column width
- use a color scheme to show the contrast i.e. fresh yet historically rooted, how do you show that with color?
What do I want to say?
6. Iterating
- I want to show the versatility, considering putting pieces of where and how it is used.
- Andrew said my text can be much smaller because it has a tall x-height so it is readable when it is small.
Problems I Faced:
- struggling to find a balance where I can fill up white space without over cluttering the page
- keeping readability and legibility in check while making it engaging
- every time I adjusted the rag, I got orphans and widows — keep adjusting text to get it to where I wanted it to be.
Working well into the night, I tried again and again and ended up with about 20 iterations. I felt like I was trying to solve a puzzle, and every time I fixed one piece and thought I solved it, another would fall off. something that seemed to work offset something else. I was trying to make the spread cohesive, draw your eye to the text, and across the pages, talk about the typeface, not make it too obvious or apparent but also not diminishing the font as well. And then I added letters and the letters seemed to spell out a word I didn’t want! It was a puzzle where I had to find the right pieces to fit in the right places.
Somewhere in those manically made iterations, something clicked and I arrived at an (almost final) spread.
Almost final spread — used for final critique
Feedback on the final critique:
- very close!
- good readability, even though the text size is small, it made me want to read the text and I could flow through it well
- can get rid of the asterisks (not needed)
- picture complements the “f” letterform which is nice
- try re-situating the text on the left, it feels like it’s a part of the body but also not at the same time.
- consider adjusting the color of the title, bring in the pink?
- there’s a typo! add a comma at the end of the first title line
Reflection: It is crazy to me that I never once thought about legibility and readability before this project but now I notice it everywhere. I think the main realization I had was how much work actually goes into making a body of text fit in a spread page, magazine, book, or website. There are so many things to think about and account for when making a spread, I have a much greater appreciation for real-life spread makers now.
Part 2: Giving Life to Lora
When introduced to the project, I was asked what sound would be appropriate for Lora. I said soft, floating, raindrops on lilypads, delicate and bright and fresh.
Lots of song searching later I narrowed it down to a few which fit the vibe I was going for:
Prickly Pear by Portico Quartet
Un homme et un femme by Francis Lai
Currently, I’m deciding to go with Anti Sun but that could change later on.
Storyboarding
I figured the best way to storyboard, even though it was tough to start (how does one even start this process), was to write down the essential elements needed in the video to communicate the font.
From there I began to write a script while simultaneously drawing out the storyboard. I realized I had some weird ideas so maybe this process, if anything, will help me get those out.
Script
She | wakes up | five minutes before her alarm | and in a swift and effortless stroke | jumps out of bed | taking a moment | to reflect |
She’s grateful for her family | whose calligraphic roots | embedded in her sophistication and elegance without diminishing her personality.
They call her… Lora (30 seconds in)
| 4 weights |
| Lora | Lora | Lora | Lora |
Born in 2013 |In Moscow |By Olga Karpushina and Alexei Vanyashing
Made for |Cyreal Fonts |Award-winning type foundry
Inspired by |Cyrillic Script and Calligraphic
Brushed curves/contrasts with driving serifs
(Modern yet timeless)
Used to | tell stories (books), leave a lasting impression (business cards)
Looks good online and in print (Readable yet versatile)
(dynamic, fresh, playful, balanced)
designed for all
a voice for all
Lora.
I’m having a tough time deciding between whether or not to focus on the story I wrote about in my spread (personifying the font) or focus on the simple facts about the font. In this storyboard, I tried to do both in a way ( about 30 seconds to each part), but I’m feeling a little uncertain whether this is the right direction to go. I guess we have to start somewhere.
Finalizing Storyboard, Feedback:
Yoshi:
- break the narrative in the middle — documentary style- and come back to the more fun lighthearted element in the end
- try to make the style more consistent with transitions
- Same thing about consistency: change Made to Born
- Mix in the font weights more with the facts
- free for all — I don’t know what that really means, maybe pick one of those
- think about how to bring color in, the sound feels like it had gradients and maybe the color scheme is like purple — kinda like your wallpaper, very dream-like.
I began moving the storyboard to illustrator so I could get a better idea of the kinds of frames and transitions I wanted. I was talking to Jessica about this now and we thought it was so interesting how some people went into the animation thinking about transitions vs thinking about content first. For me, I think because I was excited by the starting transitions that I had to think in that mindset for it to be visually cohesive. Also, I was also prioritizing how the actual movements and transitions reflected the personality of Lora.
Having reached a good point here, I decided it would be better for me to jump into after-effects and get to know the software better to see what types of transitions and movements I could actually do. I tried doing the introduction frame by frame but I soon realized that I was just going to have to figure it out somehow in after effects itself.
The main chunk of my time went into getting the introduction down and learning transitions from after effects. Because I was using the brackets, periods, and other letterforms to build the eye and lines, it made it tough to transition things in and out of those specific shapes. I essentially had to recreate those shapes in the form of a stroke and animate it through that.
Essentially, it was a game of trial and error with a lot of fixing and troubleshooting. Watching youtube tutorials helped me learn a lot, especially with the transitions.
Feedback:
- the transition of the jumping feels clunky, not like a “swift stroke”
- try to make the bubble move a bit so it better reads like a thought
- the text in the start needs to be on the screen for a longer time
- elegant and sophisticated part: I don’t know what to read first
Having reached a good point in my video, I realized there was a lot I am not going to be able to fit in from my script and a lot of frames and ideas need to be further refined and thought through. I tried many different ways to include the name of the designers and where the font was made i.e. Moscow, but a conversation with Vicki made me realize that it is not really needed and to not put things in just for the sake of putting them in.
A whole lot of refinement and editing and many many different files later,
I finished the final video! I did run into problems rendering it and several issues with my really disorganized files. I used photoshop to go back in and fix the colors as they came out desaturated on the television and through the rendering process — I made it slightly more saturated than it should be so hopefully it will look fine on the tv. Excited to see everyone's videos tomorrow!
It’s interesting to see how the spread informed the animation and how they created a whole visual language together that enhanced each other.
Thank you Vicki and Yoshi for a great mini and for being so helpful and patient with us! I learned so much even though it was very short and fast and I think I am definitely going into C track :)
