Q . Q . Q .

futura

futura detail

bodoni

clarendon

Lets see, where should I start? Upon receiving the letter Q I have to admit I wasn't too excited. The goal was to capture the essence of each letter while staying true to the letter form. I started with bodoni just because I felt it would be the easiest to engage my full arm in. The gestural quality of the Q is appropriate due to bodoni having such a light feel. Its not a commanding type face but it definitely lets you know it has something to say. I left the widest parts of the Q lighter and the thinnest parts dark to emphasize the extreme contrast in the type. It made sense to me to repeat the arm movement over the stressed areas of Q to really, well for a lack of a better word, stress the quarks of the form. The idea behind the white chalk in the counter form was to exploit the shape created. As i studied bodoni a bit, I came to realize that there are these near perfect circles contrasted with and oval to create the letters. Since it is most evident in the Q and O i decided to make it a part of the composition.

Alright, moving on to Clarendon. I'm not really sure where I was headed with this. I feel like its the least successful of the compositions. Its a nice drawing but It doesn't convey anything about Clarendon. The left sides a little bigger than the right and it bugs me. There are so many beautiful moments in here that I should have exploited. If I could I would totally re-do this. 

Now for Futura. Oh Futura, I loved you before i had to draw you. So much math. I know I mentioned earlier that these didn't have to be exact replicas BUT how else can you capture Futura without it being perfect. The font is based on these perfect circles with the same line weight as the stems and arms and such. Its all geometric. Quadrilaterals and Circles. The idea is to be efficient. No serifs, no little do-dads or thing-a-ma-bobbers. Nothing fancy. Its to inform and command attention. So in order to capture these ideas behind the Font I wanted to create something geometric that repeats and mirrors itself. The Q is the foundation for the pattern created. The continuation suggest that this will go on for ever until a Q is misaligned. Also you might notice that this is the only composition filled in completely. The reason is to leave no room for variation. Futura leaves no room for frivolous decoration. So for numbers. I took the printed letter given to me and based my composition around it. I measured everything on that letter to get my composition correct.  Here is my equation for the relationship between inner and outer circles. 3.125 * [diameter of outer circle] / 4.375 = [diameter of inner circle] sooo 3.125 * 14 / 4.375 = 10. Simple right? The tail is just off center which bugged me. If added the distance between the two tails to any bottom part of the tail would make it the same length of top part of the tail located inside the inner circle. Ok so theres more numbers that repeat and revolve around this composition but its just too much to blog about. Talk to me and I'll lay it on you. Point is that I wanted this as mechanical as possible to capture the industrial, geometric feel of Futura. Improvement? I would make the composition about six inches longer so that the bottom right Q doesn't look like a G and the top left doesn't look like an O.