Year:
2005 | School year: 11 | Subject: Graphic
Design | Format: Rationale | Grade:
A
Here is my font, called "Pie".

The main things that I wanted
from my font were:
1) Readability in small sizes
2) No serifs
3) Each letter to be drawn in one stroke
I believe that I managed to achieve these goals in my finished font.
Things I did not think I needed
to consider were:
1) Readability as a paragraph font
2) Joining of letters
Readability in small sizes
As I use programs such as Photoshop in my art, it has come to my attention
that there are relatively few fonts that are readable at a small size,
say 8pt and less. This has basically limited me to arial for my icon making,
which is very frustrating when you want something more human and less
regular. In my font, I chose to use the general roundness of arial to
make it readable when small, but make the curves less circular and regulated.
This has proven effective – my result is a font that is readable
when small, but not completely straight and perfect like arial.
No Serifs
Because when it gets down to it, I don’t like serifs. They get in
the way
when text is small. Compare “text is small” to “text
is small”. The serifs
blend the letters together and reduce readability. Not only are serifs
bad
for small text, but on normal sized text I see them as an unnecessary
distraction from the passage you are trying to use.
Each letter drawn in
one stroke
This adds to the less regulated nature of the look of the font, and aids
in
ease of reading.
Readability as a paragraph
font
Pie is not intended for use as a paragraph font, but as an artistic font
for
use in images and icons, thus not for passages much longer than single
sentences. Surprisingly,
Pie seems to work quite well as a paragraph font, though
unintentionally.
Joining of letters
Everyone knows Lucida handwriting, that irritating pseudo – handwriting
font
that high school students love typing their assignments in.
Each letter joins onto the
next, imitating handwriting, but managing to be
impersonal, ugly and hard to read at the same time.
I’ve always thought of
Lucida Handwriting as the mutant lovechild of serifs
and the untidy scrawl of a doctor’s prescription*. Needless to say,
I DID
NOT want my font to join up every letter like Lucida Handwriting does.
But I
didn’t want to have every letter neatly finished, because I still
wanted it
to have a personal touch. So I added slight tails to some letters, not
enough to join them up.
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This is ERIN's schoolwork,
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orally.