51–262 CDF: Project 3
Typefaces
Part 1 — Exploring Caslon
Caslon is an old-style serif typeface designed by William Caslon, who had a strong reputation for typefaces that were extremely suitable for long passages of text, with high quality and attractive appearances. Caslon was heavily influenced by Dutch Baroque typefaces, which were popular in England at the time. He proceeded to establish a tradition of engraved typefaces in London. His type rapidly gained a reputation for workmanship, and he used Dutch and French equipment to do so. Caslon’s typefaces were appreciated in phases, undergoing an eclipse due to the arrival of other typefaces like Baskerville, but quickly regained popularity in books and other fine printing situations.
Popular features of his typeface include the crossbar on the italic J, the inward fold of the h, the sharply slanted A, the rotated casting to create the pound sign, and more. Several metal-type versions have been made over the years, ranging from Caslon Old Face, to Caslon 471/540/3/641/223/224, The Monotype Corporation, Imprint, and so on. After 1990, there were even four digital releases of the typeface. Caslon Old Face is considered to be the original, and as time progressed different versions of the typefaces got bolder, more italic, and more. Interestingly enough, there was a font called Caslon Openface, often mistaken for a typeface of Caslon’s, but it had no connection to it whatsoever.
Part 2 — Poster Sketches
To start the designs for my poster, I looked into the key use of Caslon — which is long passages and texts. I also noticed that the clearest differences in the typefaces were in its Italic and Bold weights. I made it a point to keep that in mind because I couldn’t exactly showcase it in my sketches. I drew out 6 potential designs that I thought would incorporate my ideas and the message of the typeface the most.
Part 3 — Initial Digitalisations
I decided to use a couple of my sketches and developed them on Illustrator, but some felt a lot more complex and detailed than others. I chose about 4 to work on. While I was doing this, I realized that with typefaces, things appear a lot more different on Illustrator than they do in my mind and while sketching. I chose to draw out the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th from my sketches. I didn’t write in the text because I wasn’t fully certain what I wanted to do my text on, but I left space for it. I also realized that some of the iterations didn’t allow space for text, and so that it was best to eliminate those. My 1st sketch was one of those, but it didn’t allow for a long passage of text, which I thought a key message of my poster should be. My 3rd sketch seemed rather plain, so while I recreated it on Illustrator, I decided not to proceed with it. With my 5th sketch, I decided it could be more powerful to incorporate the numbers of 1722, the year Caslon was created, into the larger letters. This seemed to be my most interesting design, so I chose to continue working on it for my final design.
Part 3 — Final Illustrator Iterations
I wanted to continue working on my 4th digitalization from the previous step as it was the one that most of my peers seemed to like. I wanted to continue improving upon it with both the feedback from my peers and just general iterations I kept working on. I also wanted to look more into the text I was going to use. Upon receiving feedback from Amanda (which was, ironically, feedback that others gave me too), I decided to move around the black and white spaces, and play around with the italic and regulars to keep an idea of what looks best. I made a clear distinction with the numbers and other letters that I was going to use. I also decided to use text from To Kill a Mockingbird, because it was written in Caslon. I thought it would be the best representation of the typeface. My final illustrator iterations are shown below.
Part 4 — Final Iteration
For my final design, I chose the 3rd one from the previous step. I thought it represented my typeface well — incorporating numbers, bolds, italics, regulars, as well as displaying the year it was created and how it looks when it is properly used. It has good use of negative and positive space, and I thought extended the white portion of the poster so that there is black text over it, would incorporate a book well, which is what another major use of the typeface is as well.
