Following on from a point made in my previous work critique, I have decided to delve further into the neon type format. After a long search at the different kind of “Classical” neon type available, I did not find one that looked similar to what I have envisioned in my head. Because of this I have decided to create my own neon typeface, made using Adobe Illustrator and being inspired by the previous typefaces I have looked at and analysed.
To start this process I first began by sketching out some initial ideas of what flicks and flairs I wanted certain letter forms to posses, In order to set my typeface apart from regular sans serif fonts it would need to be obvious that it was meant to represent the text often found on old neon signs. I thought that the answer to this would be to include some loops on the letter forms similar to those seen in the top left example given above, these help give each letter form a more “neon style” finish. Once my sketching was done I then moved on to creating the finalised versioned digitally on Adobe Illustrator.
I decided to use Adobe Illustrator rather than Photoshop due to the ability to create lines and shapes in a vector format, I was unsure of what size these letter forms would need to be in once I placed them into my article itself so the ability to resize them without any loss of quality was vital. The creation of the letter forms was relatively simple and went mostly without problems or setbacks, with the large amount of inspiration I had collected I found combining different ideas easy and using the pen tool to create a smooth curves of the letter forms happened quite quickly. While creating the letter forms it did occur to me that certain letters are symmetrical and I could simply create one side of the letter form then duplicate and reflect it to make it perfectly symmetrical, however I decided against doing this. I did this due to the fact that I am almost certain that this typeface will not be used for body copy and I, currently, only have plans to use this effect for large, sign type titles where every small detail of each and every letter form will be easily visible, I think that having some small imperfections on some of the letter forms would help to make my titles appear more personalised and therefore, look more convincingly like a classical, hand made neon sign. Examples of these small imperfections can be found in places like, the slightly asymmetric curve atop the O as well as the curves on C’s and S’s, although this is only a very small design choice and it did extend my design time considerably, I think that because I plan this font to play such a key role within my article that I think it is worth spending the extra time to get every detail how I want it to look like.
Inputting My Typeface Into A Design
My first attempt at inserting the typeface into a design is the outcome seen above, as well as using the self generated typeface I also included the neon effect seen in my previous design, although this typeface is much lighter and thinner, I find the effect to work more effectively at appearing as a realistic neon sign using this typeface. The brick texture in the background helps the glows within the background blend more realistically. A complication that occurred which I did not foresee was the fact that I would have to manually assemble the generated letter forms within Illustrator, this took quite a considerable amount of time because of the inconsistencies within the kerning and Leading, however I found that these also did not have to be perfect, rather than using rulers and grid lines to ensure that each letter form was pixel perfect distance apart I simply used my eyes to get a rough but still very accurate finish. The barely noticeable difference also help to translate a feeling of hand made, classic design. Although this did have to be much less noticeable than the previous asymmetricality within the letter forms themselves due to the fact that wildly inconsistent kerning can be extremely distracting and heavily detrimental to the overall design. That being said I still feel I have done a high quality job and I am very pleased with the overall result, although I have previously made a typeface I still feel I am completely new to the aspect, lacking much experience of any vital rules that may exist within the creation process. However if I were to create another typeface I would spend much longer not looking for inspirational letter forms, but instead spend a considerable amount of time researching other people’s creation methods in order to possibly solve my problem of imperfect kerning and leading, as well as hopefully acquiring some useful tips along the way in an effort to speed up the process of creating the letter forms themselves.
I think this effect would benefit from being used in further designs and more experimentation with point size and placement to see where it can be used most effectively, I also plan to experiment with the different colours that could be used with the neon effect. However for everything i have used it for so far i am very pleased with the result and feel it does in fact correctly correlate a much more classic look than the previous neon type effect that i created earlier on in the project, this experimentation was well worth the large amount of time it takes to create messages for.
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