Making the Sonogram ?!?

I thought I could maybe find a way to make a fake sonogram type looking image, and I searched and searched on the internet on how to achieve such results, but alas, no result. I guess it's just up to me to figure out a way to create this weird looking effect on CS4..somehow..

Also, I forgot to mension before, once the sonogram is finished, that will go towards the little handouts I will be making for people to pick up (as they will have a still from the sonogram as the background image and with a web link on there, where people could visit and download the font online), and also snaps from the animation will be blown up to make posters and those posters will be also submitted as better versions of the posters for the Splice.

End of year show? | Space

This is the space I have chosen to place my show, the corner of the feed studio! No special reason as to why, I just thought the sonogram will look good there, with the imac on a desk and the pregnant serif letter on there somewhere as well! I just wanna have as much as I can with this, as it's a really wonderful opportunity for me to show people and even myself of what I can do or am capable of I guess...

End of Year show | My Plans

Okay.. Now that the font is designed, it's time I get all the plans sorted for my end of year show! and the same question keeps popping up, HOW to show a hybrid font???? I could have some sort of a mural on the wall representing the stages of the hybrid, or I could have the posters printed and have a simple exhibition! But, looking at the exhibitions I researched, I want to do something more challenging and exciting, so that when people walk by my exhibit, there are atleast some heads nodding along with appreciation, as I want people to really enjoy my work.

After some really dry and dull moments of trying to come up with a solution for my show, and with some help from my group mate Alaa, the idea of sonograms emerged! Before, this is the time before I had even started making my font, I had wanted to make a poster for the hybrid font so that you could literally see the hybrid being conceived by the parent fonts. That idea certainly got some noses going up in disgust but to me it seemed like a cool concept. With the sonogram idea, it is more or less the same concept just more 'family friendly' I guess.

For those who don't know, a sonogram is a scanned image of a pregnant woman's unborn child in her tummy!

And the idea here is that instead of the unborn child, I want to place a hybrid letter in there, and I will make a little animation which hopefully replicates a sonogram imagery, with all the movements and other stuff!

When I pitched this idea to my tutor and some of my group mates, I got reactions that said 'hmmm. not sure if it's gonna work', but I'm still gonna charge on with this idea as it definitely seems the right thing to me..... and only time will tell how people will react to this!

With the sonogram animation, I will display that on a imac, and whether it needs to be hidden or not I still need to decide on that! Which will be set on a table along side the mum of the hybrid, the serif font letter, which will have wires going from it to the mac monitor (replicating a sonogram equipment).

At first I did want to try and make the sonogram equipment, but that is just too much and too unnecessary, all I want to show is the sonogram image and that bond between the mum and dad and the hybrid and to be honest, I don't think I will be hiding the imac screen, it won't effect the show in anyway plus it will just make things so much simpler for me...

I'm guessing all this writing is just making the idea seem like a mess, so I need to produce some visuals for the show, which I will get cracking at!

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!

Final 6 Font Posters.

These are my final six posters, carrying on the same concept like explained in the previous post! They are all pretty successful and I like them a lot! They narrate the message of the font well and that's all I wanted from the posters.

Font Poster Further Development??

The changes I made are as follows. I made the structure of the whole 3 different S's a bit smaller on the page and more central and I think it looks better, so definitely improvement from the previous posters!

hmmm, I wasn't intireally sure what I was doing with this. The whole idea of the poster was it to be black and white, just basic and to the point, but I guess the addition of colour makes it that tad bit more interesting and 'fun'.

Font Poster Development.

So these are my initial ideas for the final posters for the hybrid font! The posters are supposed to narrate the meaning of the font easily when people look at it, and by looking at this I think it's clear enough. The two parental fonts are spliced together on top of each other, and the hybrid is placed on top. Also, with the hybrid and the other fonts underneath, you can tell how the hybrid got it's 'traits' from!

Though, there was a problem with these couple of posters! The letters seem to placed in the middle but really big, so there is no sense of composition in there, which makes the posters less appealing graphically!

Poster development...

For my posters, I wanted to show a simple an straightforward concept in them! The two parental fonts combined to show the hybrid on top! I played around with the layers and adding and taking away strokes to see what different results I got and until I got something I was happy with.

I decided that there will be 6 posters, each one showing each letter of the word 'SPLICE'. All with the same concept.

Splice: Hybrid font (Regular)

So, here it is, in its fame and glory! Splice Regular! Now using Fontlab studio 5, I can start generating the font to be downloadable for my end of year show!

Splice: Hybrid font (numbers and symbols)

and these are Splice's numbers and symbols!! phew, am I glad thats done with! Now I can start thinking about all the fun stuff like the posters and other deliverables, and FINALLY start thinking about my end of year show execution!