Kerning and Ligatures

Kerning 

 - Spacing between letters or words to achieve a visually pleasing result.

30 second kerning challenge:

1. Lifestyle Magazine - wanted equal spacing, with not too much space between the letters. Creates the impression of being trustworthy, professional, common but with something more interesting.

2. Condom Manufacturer - wonky, close together, informal, playful. Something fun and more unique about the layout while remaining easily legible.







3. Insurance Company - wide spacing, idea of having enough money to afford the space, trustworthy and professional.     

4. Independent Food Festival - funky, interesting, more unique layout, inviting and non threatening.

5. Children's Nursery - Letters look as though they've been knocked over, resembling topple block, connotations of play and fun.

Ligatures

 - connected letters.

Developing a ligature for an acronym: FFS.

Tests of the ligature included:

• Combining, and removing elements of the F as there were two (starting to manipulate the individual letters).
• Including an exclamation in the ligature, FFS is usually said in anger, with force.
• Drifting away from literal interpretations of the letters and moving towards the sounds of FFS. Three hard hits, bang, bang, bang!

I wanted the ligature to be able to be written alongside a sentence, some of the 3 stroke ideas were too complicated to draw out as they included extra details, whereas the 3 pointed continuous like made 3 individual sounds when writing, hinting to 'for fuck sake'.
Further development into the use of the stoke alongside a typeface (using Vignelli's 6 typefaces):

Looking at ligature with Times New Roman, when weight is continuous throughout the ligature it doesn't compliment the typeface.
Having the ligature stroke be more gestural works well with Times New Roman as the stroke weight changes within the typeface.

Ligature used alongside Helvetica, the stoke weight should remain the same throughout to compliment the continuity and simplicity of Helvetica.
The ligature has the best impact when on a slight angle, more expressive and gestural even though the design is more structured.

When used with Futura the sharper, heavier ligatures compliment the typeface best.
Has a more punchy impact on the page, pushes the idea of being expressive and read as an exclamation in anger or disappointment.