Font design is a very interesting thing, but for some friends there is always a little trouble when facing font design. Therefore, what I want to share with you today is more like a “process” of font design. The seven methods are divided into inspiration and method, starting from the initial thinking of font design, to see where the inspiration of font design comes from, and how to achieve a stylish font step by step. I hope this share can let you face font, spring flowers ~
Inspiration is tangible, because it’s all around us. I am often asked: how should font design be done? In fact, in my opinion, this question can be divided into two questions: one is how to think? One is how to do? Here we have a specific understanding of how to find inspiration in font design.
Some of the most interesting ideas that pop up in our lives are precious. They may seem ridiculous or even ridiculous at the moment, but who can guarantee that you won’t use them when you’re racking your brain at your desk? ! So be good at “storing” ideas that flash by.
Most of the time, we will be moved by a song, will be moved by a sentence in a book, or let a certain thing a certain person affected their mood… In short, life is full of surprises, and of course there are all kinds of small situations, which can be used as sparks of inspiration in your font design. Font is not simply a stack of strokes, it is more about putting our own emotions into it.
For example, listening to Jay’s songs on a weekend actually made me feel nostalgic about how fast the day flies, so I made a set of jay’s songs fonts. Don’t worry about the style of the font, just express your emotion at the time.
Or fast graduation and see old luo that “my struggle” actually let me think about my ideal, although at that time I will graduate, but also too late to climb ideal, fell into the reality of the vortex.
Of course, when you are agitated, you can vent your emotions through the font. You should try to put on your headphones, ignore your surroundings, and enjoy your one-on-one “date” with fonts.
When you accumulate enough, you will slowly form a font design creative library in your mind. When you encounter specific font design tasks, you will search it in your mind first. Although you can’t say that there will be 100% match, at least you will become a lot of calm.
Imitation is a good way to learn and improve. Whether we make fonts or logos or other things, we are used to looking for relevant design works on the Internet first. Of course, we can also find many great design works when browsing design websites. At this time, do you scan them? Or right click and save? Or do you try to research it?
In the aspect of font design, I suggest you to copy a good work with a pen on paper, which is easier to understand the structure of font, stroke characteristics and some details than simply looking at them. Of course it would be nice to add some understanding to your ideas.
This group of words are read on the Internet before font, let’s digest, first of all, the obvious features of the font, cross pen is fine, thicker, the disparity is bigger, vertical pen and a highlight is a discretionary adds a dot, a curl is very interesting, and then the word for the whole arrangement is irregular, strewn at random have send.
This is the digestion and absorption of the style of the last group of words, to do such a group of inscriptions, in fact, there is no too complex, try to do the right. In fact, this is a typical imitation in the process of creation, remember the method I told you, first copy on the paper, and then try new word group design while the iron is hot, is not feeling 66? Still not good, that copy several times more!
How to solve the problem, the following is to teach you how to do. There are many methods. I have listed several of the most basic and practical methods to share with you. In fact, each method corresponds to countless possibilities of font design, and many surprises are waiting for you to discover.
Block surface group method is the most basic and conventional design method in font design. Block surface composition method is basically a geometric block surface as the basic stroke building word, and then in-depth adjustment and change, presenting a different form of the feeling of the font.
Specifically, the block surface group method is to first use the rectangle tool to set the thickness of strokes, and then carry out the combination of words, build the basic structure of the font, and then do further adjustment and refinement, try to break some strokes, sharing and deleting processing, constantly enrich the details of the font characteristics. This method is simple to operate, and easy to control, especially suitable for beginners of font design friends, font design can be used as a way to try and practice.
01. Use rectangle Tool (U) to determine the basic stroke thickness and then build the font. This step we can unify the stroke thickness, or depending on the font needs the stroke thickness. The basic strokes we use in this group of characters are irregular in length and width, and the secondary strokes are thinner where the strokes are more dense.
02. We have also made corresponding changes in the structure of the font. Taking the character “Elephant” as an example, the stroke disconnection is obvious, and the trend of individual strokes is resummarized under the principle of not affecting the recognition.
03. Finally, use the outline of a city building with English subtitles to make it more interesting and holistic.
Similar methods of stroke thickness, different structure of the font, and changes in composition can create a variety of segmented works.
If you think of block grouping as a mini-game like Tetris, then line joining is as flexible as Snake. This method mainly uses the software “pen” tool, by changing the thickness of line segment, straight and broken relationship, so as to design different styles of font.
Flexibility is the biggest feature of line segment connection method, in addition to the basic line, according to the actual demand to change the curve and broken line. So whether it is horizontal and vertical conventional square font, or exaggerated curve style word body, can be quickly and directly outlined quickly, this step can be completed with the pen tool; When the basic font is determined, adjust the thickness of the stroke and the end point of the straight, repeated debugging and comparison, so that the font to achieve the best state.
01. Use the Pen tool to outline the bones of the font. Font design is not a one-step process, but requires repeated comparisons and adjustments, so you only need to outline the basic framework of your idea.
02. Then we made further adjustments. We made the stroke bold and changed the end of the stroke to round, and the stroke right Angle to rounded font to make it more amiable. Modify the details and uniformly increase the height of the font, which is thinner and longer than before and has more distinct personality characteristics.
03. As a final step, I chose a font with the same rounded ends on pinyin. This simple concatenation method creates the font we want.
Special attention should be paid to the fact that when the whole character strokes are based on uniform line segments, the interspersed distribution between line segments should not be too dense and too sparse, try to maintain symmetry, appropriately increase the internal space of the font, and the air permeability will be more elegant as a whole.
For some fonts that need to show a sense of handmade simplicity, hand-drawn tracing is more appropriate. It is not difficult to understand by its name, hand-painted tracing method is probably the first hand on paper out of the complete font style, and then input the computer, hand-painted draft in the software to trace drawing, and appropriate modification.
Compared with computer drawing, hand-drawing always has different feelings and advantages, especially for some complex font design, hand-drawing is more flexible and efficient, and then the font is restored by computer, so that the feeling of handmade simplicity can be maximized and retained.
01. The first step is to draw the whole font on the paper. For some complex fonts, it is especially necessary to calm down and draw patiently. This set of fonts is actually a little more “splash” effect, but nothing special in the glyph.
02. Put hand-drawn fonts into software for tracing, and modify Outlines and details. In general, I will use my mobile phone to directly take a picture of the draft and then trace it by the software. Of course, direct scanning will have better effect.
03. Finally fill in the color to complete the design, you can also use Photoshop software for processing, so that the font effect is more outstanding, more visual impact.
This method focuses on the hand-painted paper, font form and detail changes and processing are basically completed on paper, software tracing is as far as possible to restore the original hand-painted draft, of course, the final details of the problem should also be timely to be corrected.
The font structure in the font library is strict and regular, because it is mainly for the purpose of convenient reading, so it lacks some personality release. The font library transformation method is based on the design of the font in the Chinese font library, to be transformed and modified, so that both in form and style are different from the original font, distinctive personality and new vitality.
To be honest, this is a relatively “lazy” design method, but it is also a relatively effective and fast design method, especially in some e-commerce industry font design will be used in this method. Inductive down word stock change Build law is actually on the original font, addition and subtraction of the additive is refers to change the original character font strokes, and increase the stroke details, and subtraction is refers to the original broken pen strokes in a reasonable manner to clever sharing, flexible, ultimately achieve the goal of simplifying, in the form of one plus one minus complete transformation of character fonts.
01. We choose the fine body “fortune-teller” four words for the transformation of the basic glyph, we can according to their own needs to choose the need to transform the font, font is different but basically the same method.
02. Next, expand and subtract the font to reconstruct the font. This step is a test of our imagination. You can add new elements to the original strokes, etc., to make the font library completely cool.
03. Details processing and adjustment. This example is mainly to change the right Angle into a rounded Angle, which can be achieved quickly by using the Xtream Path. Do not blindly pursue too many changes in font design, not every stroke to a “nine chain”, enough is enough, when the expression of the font artistic conception on the timely stop it.
There are many fonts with a strong sense of form in the Western font library. We can borrow the letters as the basic strokes of Chinese, and combine them to create unique Chinese fonts.
When using this method for font transformation and design, first expand all the upper and lower case letters in The Western language for reserve, and then select the whole letters or some part of the letters to build Chinese fonts. Sometimes encounter some of these es strokes is not completely accords with the strokes of traditional Chinese, like this kind of circumstance can be in line with the principles of does not affect the recognition, break the routine, retain the original characteristics of es font, when it is not all the strokes are completely right, specific to a few strokes can according to the es to create the corresponding Chinese characters.
01. The picture shows Chiller font, a more casual and natural handwriting font. The first step is to line it up and create the outline for later use.
02. Build Chinese fonts. In the figure, the red part is the original Western alphabet, while the blue part is modified or partially cut western alphabet. The English font itself is handwritten and irregular, and our Chinese font also retains this characteristic. You can imagine that if these words are of the same size, the artistic conception of the font itself may not be fully expressed now.
03. Add English as an ornament, directly use the Chiller font can be put together is not harmonious like a family, love each other.
To sum up, the Chinese structure strokes as the basic needs, flexible borrowing of Western fonts and Chinese fonts to change and adjust, and retain western characteristics, in order to achieve the purpose of using western.
Whether it is the idea of inspiration or the method of word formation, everyone has a habit of the way, just share their own small method, not necessarily follow such a step; A good font design work is not one step or two steps can be completed, more need you to constantly try, adjust, as much as you will eventually find their own way and style.
Inspiration, methods have told you, diligent you quickly practice it!
If that’s not enough, my new book, Evolution of Font Design, will surely satisfy you with more fun ways to make words.
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