Direcção by Catarina Lau and Ana Ambrósio

Tetris by Diana Salavisa e Rita Dias

Paper clip by Ana Mafalda Sotelino and Sara Marques

Esboço


One example showing the process: Origami by Raquel Marques


1. Sketches and paper models



2. Vectorising



3. Application (font file and paper model)

Origami in text



Paper model


More pictures here.

typeismycandy.pdf.zip

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

Tiago finding out shapes and construction

Vírgula

Pendulo digitisation

Sketches from Catarina e Margarida

Sketches from Ágata e Edna

João digitising

Looking at the collected examples

Kai writing 01

Kai writing 02

Examples of writing

Cátia sketching

Roda, Pedro e Catarina sketching and writing

Firma sketches

Paulo M. sketching

Gabriela sketching

Caramelo early stage

Carla sketching

Gardénia presentation

Berbigão presentation

Dona Emília presentation

Joana showing Vírgula

Algibeira presentation

The group looking at first results

Hugo editing Algibeira

Digitising Caramelo

Vírgula

Caramelo

Firma

Cedofeita

Linda Maria

Ginginha

D. Emília

Typethecity.pdf.zip

In this 4 day workshop for students and professionals alike, we will design lettering and signage that is based on Lisbon’s great variety of vernacular and vintage shop signs.

These beautiful but sadly endangered pieces will be used as inspiration and as the base for our sketches to make our own fictional classic shop signs.

Project Briet:
1. In the days and weeks before the workshop starts, you can already collect pictures of nice vintage signage from your city. It would be better to collect different styles but always things that interest you.

2. These picture we all collect will give us a huge pool of resources, and with the theory you will learn during the first day of the workshop, you will be able to group and distinguish different kinds of signage.

3. Find a shop name that you would like to design a sign for. It should not have more than ten different, but preferably more than four (unless it is a very elaborate script sign) characters. Based on the techniques we showed you, and based on the pool of signage photos, start sketching, sketching, sketching, and refine your lettering.

4. We will then digitize our drawings with a font editor and create the base for a real, working typeface that you can work with (we start with a few characters in the workshop and based on this experience you can finish a typeface and use it in the context of graphic and typographic matters).

Note: The pictures you collect must be printed, even if in black and white laser printer (make sure they have good quality). Also they should be your own pictures, not pictures taken from books or collected from the internet or other media. It is advisable (but not mandatory) to collect examples that use lower case roman letters.
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Neste workshop de 4 dias para alunos e profissionais de design gráfico, vamos desenhar ‘lettering’ e sinalética que é baseada nos reclamos de carácter vernáculo e ‘vintage’ das lojas de Lisboa.

Estas pecas cheias de personalidade mas infelizmente em perigo, serão usadas como fonte de inspiração e como base para os nossos esboços para fazer o nosso reclamo de loja fictício.

Projecto:
1. Nos dias anteriores ao início do workshop haverá que fazer uma recolha de fotografias de ‘vintage’ lettering/sinalética na tua cidade (Lisboa ou outra).
Será melhor fazer uma recolha de estilos variados mas sempre que sejam do teu interesse.

2. Estas fotografias que todos recolhemos irão dar-nos imensos recursos e com a teoria que irás aprender no primeiro dia do workshop, serás capaz de agrupar e distinguir diferentes tipos de leterring/signage.

3. Escolher um nome de loja para o qual gostarias de desenhar um ‘reclame’. Esse nome não deverá ter mais do que 10 caracteres diferentes mas não menos do que 4 ( a não ser que seja um script bastante elaborado). Baseado nas técnicas que te mostramos e na colecção de fotografias de sinalética, começa a desenhar, desenhar, desenhar, e a melhorar o teu lettering.

4. De seguida iremos digitalizar os nossos desenhos com um editor de tipos de letras e criar a base para um tipo de letra com o qual poderás trabalhar (começamos com alguns caracteres no workshop e baseado nesta experiência poderás terminar o tipo de letra e usá-lo no contexto do design (tipo)gráfico).

Nota: As fotografias que recolhes deverão ser impressas, mesmo que numa impressora laser a preto e branco (certifica-te que a qualidade é boa). Deverão ser fotografias tuas, não fotografias retiradas de livros, da internet ou outros média. É aconselhável (mas não obrigatório) escolher sobretudo exemplos que usem letras minúsculas.

It was quite complicated to get all the names for Portuguese, I had some sources but not always agreed with the words used. Sometimes I picked up the word that was most used, other times I just used a word that I think suits better or the English word (I think translation is not always necessary or possible). I would like to have some input on these subject and open some discussion about typographic terms in the Portuguese language, please feel free to participate and post some other possibilities. For example I translate Type Design to ‘Desenho de Tipos de Letra’ and Type Foundry to ‘Fundição Tipográfica’.

Vertical Dimensions

Overshoot

Body Parts 01

Body Parts 02