Blogstipation
I apologise for my lapse in posts. Things have been stepping up here and I’ve been struggling to find an opportunity to write when I have time but also feel motivated. You could say that this is one of those times. Except I don’t really have time, and I’m motivated by procrastination because the task of doing some certain homework is proving too stressful for me. I thought writing this post would loosen me up a bit. I’ll go through each subject’s progress instead of chronologically.
Reviving Type
The last two weeks in this class have been very frustrating. I thought I was at a point where the overall thicknesses were the same as my book but when I did a new print out it was way too bold. I have to take the outlines from being a series of dots roughly in the right spot to a smooth curve. So I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone and while smoothing out the letters into curves, go a little on the light side. It’s slow going but I think I’ll get it all done. Right now I have most of the lowercase done roughly.
On a better note though, I’ve got the spacing matching the book quite well for the moment. Each letter has a side bearing, the space either side of it. I started by halving the space between two lowercase o’s because they will have the same side bearings. I then measured other letters next to the o’s to find their side bearings. Again, it’s slow going but I think I’ll get there.
Here’s a close up of the black text of the book with my digitisation in grey on top.
Stone carving!
This is one of my favourite classes, for many reasons. After takin a rubbing I realised my R was lacking in certain ‘departments’ as Peter Verheul would say. The diagonal and bowl weren’t heavy enough.
Anyway, I’ve now finished my uppercase R assignment. I’m pretty happy with it. I’m getting more confident with the chisel now and I’m looking forward to starting on my next project, a 5 letter word which I’m unsure about at present.
Peter B
This has been an interesting one. Our lesson two weeks ago was cut a little short due to the kind folks from Linotype coming all the way from Hamburg to give a talk to us about their company. They do a lot of stuff I never realised. They also were kind enough to give us all one of their huge type specimens and access to their type library for educational purposes. Quite generous indeed.
But back to Peter’s class. It’s actually the class I’m avoiding right now as I write this. We have to make a 10 minute talk about something type related… Well I know what I’d do a talk about if I was talking to anyone else besides type geeks. There really isn’t anything I know that they don’t. So I need to figure that out soon. Here is a picture from Alex’s talk from last week, he was brave enough to go first. Afterwards, Peter did a talk about parameters within type and how many different ways there are of classifying types.
Python
Luckily I have less to write about here as Just was sick two weeks ago and I haven’t done a lot with this recently but here are some snippets of my modular typeface I’m working on. The idea was to build the letters out of modules that can contain images if I want.
Drawing type with Erik
We’ve been using type cooker to give us random ways type should look and then we have to draw it. I don’t have my latest drawing, I’ll try to update this post later. We’re at a stage now when we are going to start doing our own recipes instead of doing them as a class which is nice. Everyone is getting much better at drawing type and it’s great to see the improvements but Erik wants us to actually be faster and less refined now.
In more recent news, because the Dutch love eating letters we’ll be making chocolate letters with clay and a vacuum former in a few weeks at Erik’s studio. Just in time for Sinterklaas.
Contrast exercise with Peter V
Another satisfying thing to notice is how we start to see problems in our own work sooner and have begun training our eyes to see subtle differences. It’s much harder than it sounds. I’m still struggling a bit but compared to my capability a few weeks ago I know I’ve improved. I’m probably repeating myself but we were set the task to draw a roman, a low contrast and a high contrast. We will draw them the best we can then pick one to develop into a whole typeface. It levels out the class a bit skill-wise before we begin our final project, so we’ve all made at least one font. It also teaches us how to analyse our own work and set out on planning the different weights of one type family. Really enjoying this so far. Here are some shots from class, my hand drawing and finally the digitisations as they are at the moment.
Mirtele’s premieré
She sat me down at the cafe the day before and explained the whole thing to me before I saw it. I was grateful because I could follow the plot, and the jokes. It’s called Hoe Overleef Ik (zonder) Liefde, it’s a musical is based on one book from a series by Francine Oomen. I won’t say too much because I don’t want to embarass anyone but judging by how many autographs were given out at the end, the audience loved it as much as I did. So I’m not being bias! Great to finally see her in action and understand her world a bit better.
Industrial Design Exhibition
On the 4th we went to the opening night of the Industrial Design Exhibition. It had work from many years of alumni as well as the graduates from this year. Some great work has come out of this academy since 1953. My favourite from this year’s work was this beautiful prototype for a chair. The designer, I was told, designs boats. I don’t have trouble believe that.
Frederik has been sick
He has been slowly going brown for the last few weeks and I took him to the Florist. It was immediately clear what I’d done wrong to a trained eye. Too much water. The roots were rotting. The florist explained it was too late and that I should consider purchasing a replacement. I thanked her, or him, I’m not sure, and went home to make an emergency operation. Sure enough when I pulled him out of the soil, his roots were brown. I spoke to a friend who knows more than most about plants and after looking at it he told me not to give up. I chopped off the dead bits and drained the water. Now all I can do is wait, I think he’ll come good.
An amazing birthday dinner
Aliz and Pradnya invited me to their house for a belated birthday dinner. I don’t care that I had to wait, it was super nice. Not only did Aliz cook but also got one of my favourites. Ben and Jerry’s icecream. I left with a smile on my face. Thank you guys!
Aleksandra’s Birthday!
On Thursday night we all went out and got a bit boozy. Nice to let off some steam. There were 8 of us there. Happy birthday Aleks!
Lukas Schneider Lecture
Lukas was kind enough to come to our little classroom and give us a talk about some projects he’s been working on. Thank you we appreciate your time! Great to see how other people work and how they entered the field.
Ok well, times up. I should really try and do some work now. 9pm on a Saturday. Woo!
