Final Rationale

The typeface 'Simple as ABC", has been created from research into the adjective 'Playful', and most prominently into how children play and the different types of play helps them to develop into their childhood. The lengthened ascenders connote growth, development and a sense of movement, kinetic energy. Each letterform has also been manipulated individually according to it's characteristics, whether it has ascenders, descenders, bowls or counters, this is to show individuality and to help maximum typographic accessibility, an idea from Fontsmith. The heavy weight, small counters and rounded edges, create a sense of a confident, daring and bold personality, which is what play encourages children to do. Univers was chosen as it was the opposite of the personality I wanted to create; it was consistent, steady and rational. It needed to be diverse, unbalanced and stimulating, whilst also exuding mischievous, adventurous and immature personality traits, which are portrayed through the rule breakers within the typeface; the unbalanced 'D', the reflected 'D' and '6' and '9', shows how boundaries are being found and rules are being broken and learnt, as what happens in a child's development. The stroke and lack of fill, creates space for more creativity, using imagination to fill the white space, but also because the black fill was too grungy and aggressive. The rounded edges, were to stop the type from being too sharp or aggressive, it reflects roundedness and openness which makes it more approachable to young children, as they learn symbols and images before letterforms and words. The typeface will be used for display purposes, preferably in the context for young children, such as magazines, or tv show titles. The typeface has been made into stickers, to expand on the idea of playfulness, they can be used hands on, as an object, using multiple senses. This meant the stroke and weight needed to be enlarged to have a bigger surface area for the sticker sheet, also meant the lengthened ascenders had to be slightly shorter, to avoid complicated shapes. The colours chosen are the basic CMYK primary basic colours which are associated with and attracts the attention of children more so than black and white, the black shadow effect creates a 3D look, again giving that hands on effect.

Research - How do Children Play?

As my adjective is playful, I began to research into children and how they play and why they play, as this is a very interesting prospect to me and I wanted to bring my research and this discussion into my typeface design. First of all the different types of play, suggests that the letter forms can be different and each letter can be individual, as are children.

Solitary Play - This idea suggests that each letterform is stand alone and can be it's own letterform. Which is creating an opposite approach to Univers and making them all individual instead of a united typeface. It also means that each letterform needs to be manipulated and changed in their own different ways which are suitable to their characteristics. This type of play means the child grows more confident, which is also one of the reasons I chose the bold typeface and meant for my typeface to stand out, which is why I have chosen to give it an extremely increased weight and stroke.

Risky Play - This type of play gave me the idea of breaking rules within a typeface and the idea of being curious and experimental with letterforms. Which is why I chose to flip the 'D' and also flip the bowls of the 'D' so therefore it was unbalanced. It shows fun and curiosity and experimenting with how much you can change. It also builds independence which brings us back to the idea of each letterform being manipulated to suit it's form and characteristics, whether it has ascenders, descender, counters, bowls or terminals.

Sensory Play - This allows children to again explore the world and assess risk, which is why I have chosen to break rules within the typeface and create interest. It allows children to get to know themselves, as each letterform knows their own characteristics and is different from the others. It allows them to discover cognitive skills and movement and placement. Another reason why I chose to elongate the ascenders to create a sense of movement.

Parallel Play - Although this contradicts that each letter should be individual, it also fits the rules of a good typeface that the letters need to be able to fit next to each other, in a flowing, readable order. Therefore the letterforms can only be slightly different. it encourage self expression (different letterforms), boosts confidence (heavy weight), eases transition, (increase legibility).

Pretend/Dramatic Play - Transforming objects into symbols, which is why I chose to have bold lettering, which could be difficult to read sometimes, but this means it nurtures imagination and creativity as playing does. It also encourages experimentation, which means that rules can be broken.

Rough and Tumble - Helps to discover boundaries, therefore experimenting with type means that I am experimenting with the boundaries of how many rules can be broken or how creative to do with a type before it becomes unreadable or illegible. Which explains the flipped D and B.

Constructive Play - This is the creative aspect of the typeface, and the creation of something new from something that already exists. This also develops imagination and improves ability to focus. Which is why my typeface still needed to be legible.

Active Play - Is the reasoning behind the lengthened ascenders, to create the sense of movement and kinetic energy amongst children. More importantly to show growth and the amount that children are learning. It also means that they follow rules and stimulate brain development, which is why the typeface needs to still be legible and only have a few rule breakers.

Cooperative Play - When children unite, they come together and play, so the typeface needs to come together as a whole and exist together and the letterforms need to be able to fit together in all different sequences. It also encourages self-expression which I believe what my typeface will do, be expressive, bold and youthful and fun.

In conclusion, within my typeface I will include aspects of all the different types of play and apply these within my typeface. With growing ascenders to represent learning and growth. I will choose a bold weight and increase the stroke width to show increasing confidence and bold expression. It will mean that each letterform will be manipulated individual to show the different types of play and to represent how children become individuals. Also the flipping and reflections of letters, show how children test boundaries and break and find the rules themselves.

Fontsmith - Typographic Acessibilty

During my research I came across a blogpost by type foundry; Fontsmith, within this it explains what makes a typeface both achieve the optimum accessibility and legibility. It was created especially for people with learning difficulties, to try and pinpoint the best typefaces for them to learn, read and write from. Which is relevant to my research and my aim for my typeface to be suitable for children, who are constantly learning and developing, therefore it needs to be easy for children of different levels of development to read. 

An interesting concept they stated, was that each letterform needs to be unique, to be distinguished from the rest. Specifically similar letterforms such as L and I. This gave me the idea to try and manipulate each letterform individual as this would maximise readability. It would also underline my choice of Univers, as all those letterforms are made to look almost identical and consistent, therefore I would be challenging this idea and manipulating the typeface to suit my both my personality 

and aim. 

   I also read here that when ascenders exceed above the cap height, this also improves legibility, which reinforced my idea of lengthening the ascenders and descenders, and this would still be readable, in fact it would be easier to read. Same thing again when I read that extended tails and descenders create clearer more established letter shapes. 

CBBC and CBeebies Logo Analysis

The recent rebrand of the CBBC logo is a prime of example of how logos and brands are changing and evolving to keep up with the forever developing digital world. The older, worn, well known green and black logo wasn’t suitable to be placed in the plethora of digital spaces that are available to us today, it was also becoming worn and immature. They wanted to regain their target audience of an older child audience. The new logo doesn’t stand out to represent children’s tv, but this was the aim. It has been made to appeal to a wide age range on both ends of the age spectrum. It is versatile and well rounded, it is ready to fit onto any range of media, the circular shape makes this a lot easier to be placed into many different contexts. The vibrant colours seem fresh and the shapes are abstract, creating a brand identity which has been described as ‘bright, mischievous and sophisticated.’ It represents quality, whilst also not being too mature or corporate. The new logo will hopefully bring more viewers to the channel of all different ages and represent the diversity of the channel itself. 

The CBeebies logo is perfect for it’s target audience of early years and pre-school children. The bubble, ‘blobs’ logotype looks safe and friendly with no sharp or aggressive corners or serifs. Therefore parents will see that the channel is appropriate for the age of their children. The bubble writing also matches the animations the ‘bug’ characters therefore both will be related to each other as a whole identity of the programme. Obviously yellow has been chosen as it is the brightest colour, to associate the colour yellow with the programme. It is also a primary colour, as children are attracted to highly saturated colours.  Although it is quite illegible due to the tight kerning, as it is aimed at young children and they see images and symbols rather than words, it is easier for them to understand, the letterforms do not necessarily have to be accessible. It creates the image of handmade objects such as play dough, and other childlike activities to give an insight into what the channel consists of. 

In conclusion, this has given me inspiration for my own typeface, to incorporate similar elements of the CBeebies logotype. The sam personalities are reflected within this logotype as the ones I want to include within my own typeface. Personalities of playfulness, youthful and expressive are portrayed through the use of a type to look like symbols and shapes rather than letterforms.

Development Sketches and Interim Crit

In a recent crit, I relayed my initial ideas and thought process of my project to everyone, whilst having my work displayed up on the wall, I explained a series of ideas I had thought of and then explained the reasonings for my development of the ones I thought were most successful. My first idea was to create a type using the scanner , where I made letterforms then scanned them in, moving them around to create distorted shapes. Which led me to the sketches of lengthening the ascenders and descenders of letterforms, portraying growth through learning and developing, as I had based my research and design of my typeface on the relevance of how and why children play. Another idea was rounding the letterforms creating a safer more childlike look therefore the letters didn't seem as agressive or sharp. A third idea was using times new roman as the base typeface to manipulate and rounding the edges and manipulating the ascenders again. Finally I have tried to block in the letters making them look like shapes and symbols from feedback of the previous concept crit. 

Initial sketches of exploring lengthening the ascenders and descenders, however I realised that this couldn't apply to all letterforms, so begin to round the letters instead. 

Experimenting using times new roan as the typeface to manipulate, I realised that the transition of the strokes made the type complicated to read and wouldn't be suitable for children. Also the weight of the font seemed to thin and the context of the typeface didn't fit my chosen adjective. 

After receiving feedback from the crit, the preferred idea to go ahead and develop was the lengthening of the ascenders and descender but also beginning to round the letters to make the typeface more friendly and approachable. Feedback also included to think about bringing colour into the design, after making it suitable for black and white text, which would play on the adjective even more. Finally to experiment with the typeface in playful settings and think and research more into how children play and try and break rules within the typeface.

Chosen Typeface: Univers

Univers was designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1954 and released by Deberny and Peignot in 1957. It is included in the family of Swiss typefaces alongside Folio and Neue Haas Grotesk, therefore it is deemed to be both contemporary and modern, which fits within my typeface rationale to be playful, youthful and energetic. The main reason behind the development of the typeface was to create a consistent typeface, which would mean that no matter what variant the font was typed in, the document or piece of text would look consistent. Therefore I chose this typeface as a challenge to manipulate each letterform to be different and changed individually according to their characteristics. I want to create the playful personality by removing the boring consistency within the letters. It has also been used within serious, scientific contexts, such as the periodic table, the challenge will be to place this within a more youthful context. After further research, it was discovered that Univers is used within tests and exams in the UK, which fits with the theme of how children learn and grow.

After experimenting with many of the different variations, the one that was appropriate to use as the basis for manipulation of my typeface was just plain Bold. The 'Light' variations wouldn't have been able to create a big enough impact and the oblique variations looked to elegant and mature.  As all the letters will still in proportion, and it meant that I could increase the weight even further, to create a statement typeface. Also after researching into other logotypes and type within the context of youth such as TV Programmes and Magazines, all type is for display purposes, therefore my typeface needs to attract as much attention as possible, the bolder the better.

Typeface Specimens

Typeface Specimens are a poster, booklet, brochure or some printed form of displaying a typeface in the most appropriate, whilst also creative way possible. It will have the typeface rationale, which describes the personality of the typeface and also the key characteristics and maybe where it will or can be used. They will include the full alphabet and some may also put the typeface into the context which best represents it.