The font I chose for this project was Century Expanded and the word that was chosen was unique. Through this project I learned a lot more about style of the typeface and how small details can really distinguish the differences between one from another. It was also interesting to learn how negative space can really add to the overall feeling of the words.

I learned how difficult tracing and hand drawing could be, especially when you are trying to make it look as crisp and as neat as possible. The types of pencil used is especially important when it comes to creating a clean typeface. It amazes me to think that people use to hand carve fonts that were so clean and precise, when I was already having such a difficult time tracing them. Hand drawing the typefaces was especially time consuming, you had to very observant of the curve of the letters, the thickness, and the spacing. My hand drawing would either be too tall or too wide compare to the tracing.

I chose Century Expanded for the type. I actually think the assignment is harder than I expected. It took me more than 2 hours to finish the project. First, I use a piece of tracing paper to practice. Later, I scaled and measured the distances between each word. Also, I measured the paper size in order to look consistent. Then, I hand drew first then traced later. However, hand drew was hard. I measured every word’s thickness, distance, and wideness. Tracing was less challenging. Overall, the most difficult part of this project was the curve.

The project turns out fine but I am not satisfied with my finial work. The display is not quite clean and the spacing is not consistent. Even though I measured the spacing between each letter, I did not consider the negative space. This is the part I did not consider and now I learn it.

Bodoni is one of my favorite typefaces beside Helvetica. The typeface is more refined with unbracketted serifs, and it has an extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes. The x-height is small and the vertical stress is strong. During the process of drawing my name “Natalie” and tracing the words “the gentle”, I noticed some other characteristics of Bodoni that made it more difficult for me to draw.  First of all, the curved parts of lowercase letters “a”, “e”, “h”, “g”, “n”, and “t” as well as of uppercase “G” go slightly over the meanline and baseline. Also, the right side of uppercase “N” extends over the baseline while the top of uppercase “A” overshoots the capline compared to other uppercase letters. Moreover, the strokes of uppercase “T” are slightly angled on the two sides; the head serifs of lowercase letters “h”, “t”, and “l” are a little bit slanted.

I also realized that in order to draw and trace more accurately, especially due to the great contrast between thickness and thinness within each letter, I needed to use well-sharpened 4H pencils. Even when I filled the letters, I had to keep sharpening my pencils so that I could keep the hairlines as thin as the actual Bodoni.

While focusing too much on getting each letter right, I forgot that letterspacing and word spacing are as important. At first, I made some mistakes when I left too much space between “the” and “gentle” for both uppercase and lowercase versions. Also, the word gentle was so crowded that it needed a lit bit more space. I tried to kern letters “T” and “A” so they would look more appealing. If I did not, they would look too awkward together in terms of spacing.

Overall, through this project, I learned more about Bodoni, the basic steps of drawing a typeface, typographic terminology, letterspacing, and word spacing as well. Although my tracing and drawing are not totally accurate, I am glad that I have learned a lot through my mistakes.

For the name tracing assignment the typeface that I used was Baskerville and my descriptive word was Charming. It was interesting using Baskerville for the first time as there were two key things I noticed about this particular typeface. The first thing that I noticed was the transition from straight line to curves at certain points of each letter. In other typeface when needing to draw up from left to right a lot of letters will allow you to just create a straight line up creating something close to a 90 degree angle. However with Baskerville in order to draw up the transition must be a curve rather than a straight line. The second thing I noticed was the difference in the thinness and thickness of the lines in the letters themselves. For example in the letter “N” the two line that are drawn going vertically is very thin compared to the line that goes diagonally connecting the two vertical lines is much thicker, maybe about 2 to 3 times thicker than the vertical lines. I also noticed that with certain letters more line spacing was involved to keep the letters from being scrambled together, for example I felt I had to push the V in Nova more to the right to give the upper left line going across more room to keep it from being too close to the O, by doing that the rest of the V looked slightly to far apart from the O.

This was definitely a much more difficult assignment then I thought it would be at first but I definitely learned something from it. I learned more about how important it is to pay attention to detail and how things like curves and thinness and thickness of line can separate one typeface from another. I also learned how thicker lines provide a much bolder, stronger presence with the thinner line have a much softer, smoother presence and how the transition from thinness to thickness and vice versa can affect a person feeling on a letter or word. Doing this assignment definitely makes you think and respect how at one point people had to create these letters on blocks by hand and how much time and precision it must have took for them to do it as close to perfect as they can. This was definitely an interesting and enjoyable assignment.

For my Trace Your Name assignment, I chose the typeface is Century Expanded. When choosing the typeface, I have looked at others typefaces and compared each other. The letter in my name is JOYCE. I believe J-O-C is difficult. The reason I think is difficult is because of the “O”. There is 360 degree of the “O” that I am going to draw by myself without any help. I believe not many people can draw the prefect circle. However, I chose century expanded is because I personally like the style and it caught my attention, it is very clear and easy. I also believe “less is more” so I like to try this in this assignment.

Tracing my name JOYCE with capital is easier then small letter. It is because “Y” and “E” is straight lines. “J”, “O” and “C” was more difficult than “Y” and “E” . Drawing JOC make me pay more focus in the curvature and gradual shift the curves, especially the O.

My next words were “THE Peaceful.” This took less time because I was allowed to tracing of the worksheet. Tracing was easy with a steady hand. The issue is I do need to focus it and very carefully. Lastly, I finish it and I did it. I think it is interesting.

The typeface I chose is century expanded. I chose this typeface is because after I tried every single typefaces in Microsoft word, this one looks the best. I like how it combines traditional beauty and modern neat. Obviously, it is not easy to trace, but I really enjoyed the process of doing it.

Once I started, I realized that century expanded has one typical feature“ every corner is round, every edge is straight. So actually, tracing job is much easer than I thought before. Through this project, I learned how to appreciate typefaces, I started to pay attention to their details, just like to appreciate a beautiful person. Before, I thought typefaces has no life, but I am wrong, it has million life styles. And each style has different meaning, century expanded’s life meaning is “I am elegant, as well as modern”.