Just Creative Design

What is a Font Flag? What is a Font Specimen Sheet?

Do you know what a font flag or font / type specimen sheet is? Here are the answers as well as an example made by myself for typography class at university.

What is a Font Flag?

A font flag is a poster – a visual ‘sell’ – presentation of the style, feel, mood and aesthetic sense of a particular font. It deals with the emotive, pictorial, poetic or pragmatic sense of the font. It may recall the sense of history, the classification group, notable or famous uses. It is about appeal – looking good.

What is a font specimen sheet?

A font specimen sheet is about measurement specifics, display of the font – all characters and expressions, at differing point sizes, paragraph setting, leaded or tracked. Upper Case and Lower Case, title box, formal identification of the font - its name, classification, designer/typographer, the foundry – and a demonstrated showing of ‘font family’ characteristics – weights/shade in print.

My take on making a font flag and specimen sheet

For typography class at University we could choose any typeface we wished and then we had to make up a font flag and a font specimen sheet, here is the result, as well as a title page.

I chose Bodoni because it is so unique and because I wanted the challenge of working in an Didone (Modern) font, something I have never done before.

I made the background in Photoshop from about 8 different layers, then merged them and imported into Illustrator. The rest was done in Illustrator. You may notice that the Fibonnaci Sequence or golden mean has been the inspiration for these designs.

The characteristics of a Didone (Modern) type face.

• Thick vertical strokes.
• Thin horizontal strokes.
• Fine hairlines.
• Straight serifs.
• Extreme contrast between the thick and thin stokes.
• Curved letters balanced and slightly compressed.
• The angle of stress is vertical.
• Prints best on a smooth matt finish, white paper with black ink.

A thing worth noting on most digital Bodini fonts is that they suffer from a particular kind of legibility degradation known as “dazzle” caused by the alternating thick and thin strokes, particularly from the thin strokes being very thin at small point sizes. For more info on this see Bodoni on Wikipedia.

Bodoni Font Flag

Bodoni Font Specimen Sheet

Typography Title Page (For a little typopgraphic pdf book we are creating.)

Need to brush up on your typography skills?

• Top 5 Typography Resources of all time
• 30 Fonts That ALL Designers Must Own
• How To Choose A Font
• ilovetypography - A typography blog
• 54 Typography Resources Every Designer Should Know

Feedback / Suggestions / Constructive Criticism is appreciated. I would love to hear your feedback.

Free Abstract Cube Decoration for you to print out!

Here is a free graphic design abstract cube decoration that you can print out for decoration to remind you of Just Creative Design You can see above what the cube looks like when printed out and made up. Your size will be the mini one, it is approx 6×6x6 cm or 2.36 x 2.36 x 2.36 in. You can click on the picture below to download the template. You then print it (don’t forget to change print format to landscape), then cut it out, then sticky tape it together. It should take less than 3 minutes to complete. About The Cube This cube was part of a university project (view another uni project here) where we had to examine the use of common design symbols in an abstract context to help create a unified cohesive design which in the process will develop conceptual, critiquing and presentation skills. We had to work in black and white and choose use one typographic element (except letters) and then choose a single geometric shape. I chose the Helvetica Bold asterisk and the good old circle and you could use any amount of lines that you wished. After choosing these elements we had to design each side of the cube to different instructions. I won’t mention all the instructions here, but I’ll give you an example of one… 1. Using each element only once, incorporate type texture into the design. The context or meaning of the text is irrelevant. The emphasis on this design is to explore implied texture and tone. You can see my solution on the far bottom right of the 6 squares above (on the mount board). Anyway after we designed all 6 sides we had to construct the cube and also mount the designs on a board as you can see in the top picture. What are your thoughts? Please let me know if you print it out

Update:

Kod from Turkey has sent me his printed out and made up JCD cube which you can see below! Thanks!

Mascot Design for NSW Fire Brigade

This is a post showing you some of my work from University and the thought process behind my designs. Just out of curiosity, what do you see first, GOOD or EVIL in the optical illusion above?

The Brief:

Design a promotional cartoon character (mascot) for the NSW Rural Fire Brigade that can be used in a wide range of promotional material from brochures, TV, clothing, fliers and the internet. The purpose of the promotional campaign is to minimise the occurrence of uncontrolled burning and fire devastation in residential and bushland areas and to educate the public in how to prevent bushfires. Think of a name for your mascot and design a suitable typeface for the name.

Submit two versions of your mascot, a Photoshop CMYK version and an Illustrator 3 colour PMS version.

Problem Redefined:

Create a mascot that will appeal to all NSW Residents, both adults and children and can be used across a variety of media. The mascot must make residents take action to prevent further bush fires.

Research:

This was my first ever illustration so I needed to do research more than ever. I researched mascot design, character design and my biggest downfall… drawing.

Brainstorming:

After a lot of research I brain stormed different ideas and had a lot of sketches however I kept coming back to the usual clichés. ie. a fire ball, a water man, a super hero, a fireman, etc and I wasn’t happy with these clichés as I wanted to do something original.

Solution:

I ended up taking a different spin on the project…. I made an evil character called ‘Match Man’, one that lights fires.

This evil character engages all of the target audience as it is not your usual friendly mascot and due to the evil nature of the mascot, it will make people take action to prevent further bush fires. People will want to help fight the ‘evil’ fires.

Illustrator 3 PMS Colour Version

Please take it easy on my illustration, it is my second illustration ever! The colours used were Pantone 192C, Pantone 107C and Pantone Black C.

Photoshop CMYK Version

As you can see I am a little more comfortable in Photoshop but the illustration still sucks, the background is a bit better.

What do you think? What can I Improve? Got any links? Let it rip, I am only in second year so what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger

Poster Design Tips (and experiences)

I want to share with you some of my poster design work and the tips that I came across during the process.

Over the past few months I have been working for a Nightclub in Newcastle, Australia designing their in-house posters (you can see a few below) advertising different events held at the club.

The problem with designing these in-house posters was that I had to design them to be printed at A3 and A5 while also being able to be viewed correctly in a square format at 150 x 150 pixels on the web. This was quite a design problem, but I did learn a lot throughout this process.

The 3 posters above were the first ones that I had designed without any knowledge of poster design.

After reviewing these posters on forums and with other designers I learnt that the first 3 posters I had designed were too busy, and their wasn’t a clear hierarchy.

This lead me to do a bit of research on poster design (which I should have done in the first place).

In a nutshell, I found that an an effective poster should be …

• Aesthetic - It should get attention so the message is delivered.
• Focused - It should focus on a single message.
• Ordered - The sequence should be well-ordered and obvious.

If you then compare the first 3 posters to the poster I designed after the research (below), you can clearly see the difference. The poster now has a clear hierarchy with DRU HILL being the main focus and the date as the 2nd focus. It is aesthetic, focused and ordered thus making it a successful poster.

On a similar note, I have just designed an invite for my 20th birthday. This year, I have a fluoro (it’s spelt fluoro not fluro if you didn’t know) theme for my party as fluoro is in fashion this summer in Australia. Below is the invite that I designed for it. I was influenced heavily by the electric style of the clubs here in Sydney, along with their random combination of images and vector graphics.

What are your opinions? I take constructive criticism well so fire away It’s how you learn.

For further tips on poster design check out Effective Poster Design.