I took a class at Cooper Union called “Principles of Typeface Design” and learned how to draw characters, sketch my own system by hand and create it in Robofont. My typeface, Kasvi Sans, needs work, but I hope to have it available for download later this year.
Brief and Construction
“Create your own typeface brief.” was the instruction. I had been doodling flowers lately, so wrote the following brief:
“Design a botanically-inspired typeface which celebrates the delicacy of plants. It should be able to live as headline or the main message of a greeting card.”
The name Kasvi comes from the Finnish word for plant.
“Design a botanically-inspired typeface which celebrates the delicacy of plants. It should be able to live as headline or the main message of a greeting card.”
The name Kasvi comes from the Finnish word for plant.
I experimented between letter constructions with different widths of broad nibbed pens and paint pens. I naturally fell into a pattern of using the same long line for the letter stems as I had for doodling plant stems.
In Robofont
Current Version
Finnish: A posh Viennese zombie who speaks Sioux likes Åsa’s Roquefort tacos
Portuguese: At night, Grandpa Kowalsky sees the magnet fall on the whining enguins foot and grandma puts sugar in the happy tortoise’s date tea
Moving Forward
While full-time type design isn’t my goal, I’ll certainly be using key ideas explored during this process, such as the rhythm or pattern of characters, their counter space and texture.