>Editors’ note: Only 6 months after Carla and Cátia wrote in a comment “As soon as possible we will submit a comment about our work (gardenia)”,
they went about and actually did it. It was hidden in a comment, but we thought it was much nicer to have it here on the front page
Carla & Cátia write:
Type the city
Workshop
(Gardénia)
Friday – 17th – The beginning
We had a big expectation related to what we could learn in four days… all of that because we were completly numb concerning to the act of designing a typeface.
We’ve started to expose our photographic research, exchanged some impressions about it and collected some examples that could serve us like a reference to the development of our typographic style. We’ve decided we wanted to do something in a handwritten style, but not obviously manuscripted or cursive… we wanted something fluid, to attach little ornaments to each letter, so they had distinctive and funny details.
The experience with the nibs was new to us and became very usefull to understand the contrasts of the letters.
In the end, we took a look to what everyone had done and we saw really good things. We had at that time a perfect view of the work we had in front of us.
Saturday – 18th – the first day of intense hard work
We’ve started with the sketches.
We’ve selected the name Gardénia, to develop a proposal.
We draw, draw, draw and everytime we tried to pick a path, we draw even more. We knew we had to choose a style, but the excitement we were getting from the shapes we were drawing didn’t let us stop. The worst thing was we’ve started to lose the track of time…. Susana and Kai were very supportive and gave us an excellent advice: Focus on a style and develop it.
So we did it. We concentrated ourselves in a particular style and tried to group all the letters to write our word. The biggest difficulty was to organize it in a way that all the letters looked like they belong to the same family. Susana sugest that only one of us should draw, so we grabbed a pencil and paper and divided the process in 3 stages (each one of us drew a layer):
-The 1st layer (like we called it) was made based on sketches of loose letters, we’ve just adjusted the size and little things.
-On the 2nd layer (drawn on top of the first one) we corrected some shapes and terminations of some letters.
-The 3rd and last sketch (drawn over the second one) was necessary to small adjustments, especially on the letter “a” and “g”.
We were pleased with the results of our method because each one of us gave a contribution to a stage and reached faster a coherent solution.
Sunday – 19th – Font Lab
We’ve reached the second stage of the project: scan the sketches and begin to draw using Font Lab.
We’ve encountered many difficulties, especially in relation to the endings of several letters: the corners that should have been rounded. Nevertheless, our type gradually became more coherent and the theory we started with on the first day was of great help at this stage. We’ve talked about our work at the end of the day… the results seemed excellent, our tutors were proud.
Monday – 20th – Farewell
We had several letters done and we began a difficult stage: spacing. Our eyes and good sense were our guiding principles.
We started smiling when we discovered the possibility of writing several words with our letters. I think everyone felt the same… Some were writing their girlfriends’ names, others names of seafood… It was, without a doubt, a four day effort with a great reward.
If we had to describe this experience in three words we would say that it was: inspiring, gratifying and rewarding.
We would like to thank Susana and Kai for letting us step into this new world.
Things will never be the same again.
Carla / Cátia
Editors’ note: Carla, Cátia, thanks for the great write-up
