Making a grid (OUGD403)

Making a grid
To create an effective new typeface I will need to make a grid that each letter can be constructed from it. 

Seen as my typeface is based on Helvetica it would be a great base to use for my grid, I could then construct my letters from that and possibly add parts to my grid.

This is an example of a grid for the word 'GRID' in Helvetica. I need to create one grid that can be used to create ALL of my letters rather than just one. I doesn't have to make up the full letters but show clear guidelines to help me construct each one and make sure they all have common ground and look like the same typeface.

 

I started out by printing some uppercase Helvetica letters all in the same pt size. I then used my layout paper to create a grid from them. Once I had this the test was to create other letterforms I had not included in the making of the grid from it.

These are some of the letters I managed to construct. Some were a lot more successful than others but I think it shows to a certain degree my grid works. I good thing about my typeface is I want to avoid too many curves and look at being more geometrical which makes the grid simpler and constructing the letters much faster.

This image is of two letter 'B's that I tried to make from my grid. This is where the lack of curves became a struggle. After drawing the first design I wasn't happy with it so I drew another. Unfortunately I don't like either of them so I have decided this letter may be easier to make digitally as it will be better for manipulation this way.

The letter 'F' that I drew from my grid looks really successful, the grid helped me get the perfect proportions I wanted for it to look good and fit well with the rest of my letterforms. The 'C' was a lot harder as drawing accurate non geometrical forms by hand is quite tricky but once again I managed thanks to my grid which proves although its just a rough go at a grid it seems to be working quite well.

This is an example of a letter 'V' I drew, to do this I turned the grid upside down and used the diagonals from the Helvetica letter 'A'. The 'P' I thought was successful but could possibly look better made into a letter 'R'.

This image shows how quite simply I could make my 'P' into an 'R'. I think this letter is really successful for the look I am going for.

Above shows the rest of the letter ideas I drew using my grid. I can now make variations of these ideas either on paper with the grid as my aid or digitally with the grid and Helvetica as my base.