By Xinran Zhao

My descriptive word is daring. I chose century expended as my typeface to express the feeling of the word. Through the process of design, I found some characteristics of century expended. First of all, century expended typeface has obvious contrast between thick and thin. This characteristic is reflected in every single letter. For example, when I designed the letter “X”, I made “/” thin and “\” relatively thick. Secondly, the start and end points of each letter are curved. For capital letter “T”, both sides of the upper part are bending down rather than just a straight line, which make the shape look like an umbrella. Finanly, the size of century expended typeface looks bigger than others give me the feeling of bold.

Through the tracing name assignment, I learnt that each typeface has its own characteristic and different typefaces can used to express different meanings. Bold fonts can express the feeling of vigorous otherwise the soft fonts can used for some gentle words.

In “Trace your name” assignment, I chose Bodoni. It is hard to explain why I like and choose Bodoni because I loved this typeface when I looked at it in the first time. I like the curve, shape, and style of Bodoni. For lower case letter i and j, I really like the dot of them because the dot looks like an eye of a baby. The tail of upper case letter Q is unique in Bodoni too. Comparing to other typefaces, the J in Bodoni has a the slightest hook. Even though Bodoni is not as popular as Helvetica, I like Bodoni’s different and special style.

From this project, I learned that hand-drawing was much difficult than tracing. For tracing, I just need to trace the outlines of the words and then fill them in with paint. But for free drawing, I need to pay more attention to the size and the shape of the words, and the space between two words is very important. It should not be too closed or to far away. Through this assignment, my patience was enhanced a lot because I made a lot mistakes.

My word for the trace your name assignment was BOUNCY. For this assignment I chose to use the Baskerville typeface. When choosing this typeface I looked at all of the other typefaces and compared each letter in my name and in my word.  I made sure that I felt confident in be able to execute each letter. I was torn between Baskerville and Century Expanded.

This project required a lot of focus. For starters, I had an especially hard time because I am left handed and after I did every letter it would smudge. I also had a hard time doing the serifs because the can extremely thin. The thick and thin relationship in the letters was also difficult because you had to make sure they were balance. While doing all these things you also had to make sure the letter spacing was even and the words were straight.

I could never imagine having to carve each of these letters out by hand to make type like they did in the past. This is just one of those experiences that makes me thankful the computer was invented and those designers recognition for the work they did.

Sejin Katie Im

For this project, I chose Baskerville. Honestly, I chose Baskerville because I thought it seemed easy… I was very wrong. I realized that this font had hidden curves everywhere and that serifs are harder to draw than I had assumed. I learned that the font had a slight thick and thin relationship for some letters that seemed either unrecognizable at a glance or the relationship looked so great that I decided to heighten the differences. I learned to be EXTREMELY patient throughout this project. Yeah, it was a straight forward assignment, but I got so meticulous in doing this assignment that I caught myself measuring all the sides of the letter to try to keep the measurement sizes in my head, while I commenced in drawing it free-handedly.

I think the hardest thing about this project was determining the spacing between the letters. Though the words “KATIE THE WICKED” don’t seem too difficult, I had to use multiple tracing papers to determine how I was going to space out the ‘AT’ in KATIE and “IC” in WICKED. Whenever I wrote out those two letters next to each other, they seemed too far and weird, especially because of the serifs sticking out. The ‘A’  in KATIE still looks off to me, but I’ve tried my best.

For my Trace Your Name project, I chose the typeface Baskerville. I chose this because I personally like fonts that is not too tall not too wide. Baskerville caught my attention with its balanced shape; the others seemed a bit too skewed or disproportionate in thickness and in overall appearance. I noticed that Baskerville differentiates the thickness of the lines in the letter. Tracing the first half my name SUSAN was more difficult than the second half. Drawing SUS took some more focus in the curvature and gradual shift in thickness of the curves, especially the S. The most trouble I had was drawing the thinnest curves and serifs that thickened out of the thin curves of the S. The easiest part of my name would be the AN. I have some background in drawing straight lines and noticing when lines are not perfectly straight.

My next words were “THE SAVAGE.” This took less time because I was allowed to trace/ mimic the worksheet. Tracing was easy with a steady hand. The issue was determining the  correct spacing between each letter, especially in the AVA. My technique was to draw the outline of the letters and then step back from the sheet and analyze the spacing. If my eye feels little big awkward at the sight, it means to start over.

I learned that typefaces are very strict on structure and the slightest detail. One wrong stroke and the whole letter is off and unappealing. I’ve also learned that the serifs, although very tedious to draw, is essential in stabilizing existence of the letter. Without the serifs, my name would have floated off into a 120 degree rather than the preferred 180 degree.

I am old fashion, meaning that I will voluntarily choose to draw by hand than draw with a trackpad on a laptop. Tracing and erasing brought back memories from high school and it felt great to relive the same passion again.

Write an analysis in which you discuss the typeface you chose and what you learned from this project.Post it in the category Trace Your Name.