In my typography class, we were asked to complete a project where we looked around Medicine Hat for letters and typefaces that we could trace and get inspiration from to create our own typeface. We could contruct either all lower or uppercase letters then apply it to a poster. We had to add a supplementary text to explain the story of our typeface and how it captures the overall mood of Medicine Hat.
My friends and I took an adventure to look around and found lots of our favourite typefaces Downtown of Medicine Hat.
We found lots of examples, but the one I was most drawn to was the "a" and "s" in the Phase Two Boutique & Collectibles from Downtown.
I started by drawing out an “o” in Adobe Illustrator and made it slanted like it was italicized. From there I tried to copy the “a” and personalize it. I softened the corners too because I did not like how sharp it was compared to the beautiful inner curves. I’m basing all of my letters off the “a” and “o” to make sure they all are similar.
The reason my work looks like absolute chaos is because I like to take inspiration from other letters to make sure they are all alike and match together well. With the end results, I put them into FontLab.
For names of my typeface my instructor thought “chaotic” because of how chaotic my work looks. From that I came up with “aotic”. It’s not a word, but I started out with an “a” so I think it is fitting.
For this assignment, I took inspiration from the “a” in Phase II Boutique. Using the “a”, I made it a noticeable serif on the stem and blunted the tail then based all other letters off of that “a”. I think making it a more noticeable serif helped to make it appear more traditional, while my curvature helped to add some humor into it. I think adding the yellow color from the Medicine Hat College was a good idea too. It was too bland with just black and white. I don’t think some letters seemed as united as others, such as the s, x, and z (too thick). Once I understood the Fontlab program and started to be able to create a poster with my own font, it was really enjoyable for me.
