Splice: Hybrid Font | Evaluation

The brief set for us stated that we must base our Final Major Project on the theme of DNA, but we could create anything we liked! That's what I loved about the project, the freedom but also the excitement of the subject (DNA), since it's something I am not familiar with but something that is a part of me, so this fmp was a fun way to learn more about the topic! Looking back at the whole project, I am VERY pleased with my outcomes, though it took a bit of time to get to where I am, it was all worth the effort.

Everything started from picking an area in DNA, and I picked genetics, the way traits are passed on from generation to generation, and what rare and common traits are between two parents and a child. I only picked this topic so that it would appeal to a wider audience and didn't want to explore my personal family as I saw most of my group mates were doing that. I decided to make a typeface because my interest/curiosity and love for typography. As I am still fairly new to the whole 'typography in graphic design', I was a bit nervous to choose the field, but I picked it in hope that after completing this FMP, I would be much more confident with my typography knowledge and would take that with me as a positive to University! And I'm happy to say that while completing this FMP, the skills and information I have took in have helped me so much!

My earlier research was just based on inspiration from other typographer and their style of work, but I was also trying to find maybe other graphic designers who had tried making hybrids of some sort and that's where I came across frank the grotesque blackletter, which became a strong inspirational work for me! Visits to galleries and museums were also recorded on the blog, and even though they didn't help me towards my typeface design, they helped me understand the basis of design, the principles of GOOD design.

The reason my typeface took a lot of time to create was because I had set myself to create the parental fonts as well, the blackletter and the san-serif, so that when fused together to create a offspring that will be totally original. My attention for the parental fonts was very much serious as I didn't want to rush them in anyway. Also, when starting to create my blackletter font, I had to go out and get some primary images to get myself familiar with the common shape of a blackletter typeface and for the san-serif, I took Helvetica as my main inspiration. Once the parental fonts were made, thats where the fun started for me, as I started splicing both the fonts together! I did this on paper and not on the Mac, as I wanted much more natural breeding, and the traits will be totally in my control without the obvious traits showing on the screen. Once the hybrid was made (which I was very delighted by), I started looking and got hold of a font editor that would make my font useable for everyone (as that was one of the deliverables I had listed in my proposal). I will keep working at making Splice, in a satisfactory condition for people to use, up until the end of year show!

And the posters in the end, I kept very simple and to the point! They narrate the fusion or Splicing should I say of both the parental typefaces to create something so..cool! Planning for the end of year show still continue, but as a last comment on the whole project, I enjoyed it A LOT! This was by far one of the best projects in the whole year and there is nothing I would want to change about it. Using the blogs was a very different yet fun experience. It is deffo an alternate for sketchbooks, as the annotation was much more easier, and it surely did save us some printer ink! but most importantly it was just so much easier as you can upload images and even videos in just a few clicks... If only we had got to use blogs for previous projects!

Whats a hybrid?

' A hybrid is the combination of two or more different things, aimed at achieving a particular objective or goal.... Inbiology the offspring resulting from cross-breeding of different plants or animals ' | Extracted from Wikipedia |

1. In general usage, hybrid is synonymous with heterozygous: any offspring resulting from the mating of two distinctly homozygousindividuals
2. a genetic hybrid carries two different alleles of the same gene
3. a structural hybrid results from the fusion of gametes that have differing structure in at least one chromosome, as a result ofstructural abnormalities
4. a numerical hybrid results from the fusion of gametes having different haploid numbers of chromosomes
5. a permanent hybrid is a situation where only the heterozygous genotype occurs, because all homozygous combinations are lethal.

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I wanted to look at how hybrids adopt features from their parents, like which dominant traits they pick up and which get left out, and for that I have found some hybrid animals to analyze.

1. Liger/Tigon | Most popular among the hybrids, the Ligers are crossbreeds between a male lion while Tigons are crossbreeds between a male tiger and a female lion. Ligers are the worlds largest cats, while the Tigons are prone towards dwarfism and are usually smaller than either of their parents.

2. Wolf Dog | This dog wolf hybrid is not known when it will display a wolf behaviour or dog behaviour or something in between. The wolf is a shy animal depending on nuances in body language, facial expression and on hunting skills to survive. Their jaws are much stronger than those of a dog and are often used to exert dominance.

3. Zebroid | A zorse is a crossbred horse and a zebra. A zonkey is the offspring of a donkey and a zebra and a zony is the result of crossbreeding a pony to a zebra. All these three are called zebroids - defined as a cross between a zebra and any equid. Zebroids are preferred over zebra for practical uses such as riding because of its body shape.

Zorse

Zonkey

Zony

4. Cama | A hybrid between a camel and a llama. They are born via artificial insemination due to the huge difference in sizes of the animals which disallow natural breeding. A cama usually has the short ears and long tails of a camel but the cloven hooves of a llama. Also most noticeably is the absence of the hump.

Rama the cama at 3 yrs (young adult)

5. Leopon | The result of breeding a male leopard and a female lion. The head of the animal is similar to that of a lion while the rest of the bodies carries similarities to leopards. Leopons are larger than leopards and likes to climb and enjoy water.

6. Hybrid Pheasant | The golden pheasant has commonly been crossed with the similar Lady Amherst's Pheasant. The result is a hybrid with distinguished colours from its parents.

Golden Pheasant

A Lady Amherst Pheasant

Hybrid Pheasant

7. Wolphin | A crossbreed of a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin. A wolphin's size, colour and share are intermediate between the parent species. The first captive wolphin was Kekaimalu, which shows mixed heritage even in its teeth: bottlenose dolphins have 88, false killer whales have 44 and Kekaimalu has 66.

8. Ti-Liger, Ti-Tigon, Li-Tigon, Li-Liger | it is a hybrif among the hybrids. It is a cross breed between a male tiger and a female liger/tigon or a male lion with a female tigon/liger. They are extremely rare. In the case of t-iligers, they have unusual striping where it breaks up and display a blotchy appearance. Since they are 3/4 tiger, their characteristics inhibit more of those of a tiger than a lion.

From this intensive look at hybrid animals, I have gained much more knowledge on traits and characteristics that are passed on to the offspring, and what you think is a dominant feature in an animal like the camels hump, is not necessarily a dominant trait between the hybrid.