The Brief

You have been given the typeface Baskerville that has been deconstructed, so it only contains the strokes, serifs, and bowls typical of all the letterforms.  Your task is to try and put it all back together again to read: “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.

You will need a sharp pencil, tracing paper, and a ruler.  This is a pangram containing all the letters of the alphabet.  It is all lowercase.

Constructing the jigsaw puzzle

I had a good look at the different stems, serifs and bowls while doing this exercise.  I started with the baseline and drew the letter “x” in lowercase to establish the x-height.

I noticed that some stems have a serif on the one side but not on the other.  The terminals of the “c” was not rounded in the pangram, so I took the liberty to round it.  The same with the terminal of the letter “j” and “r”.  The descender of the “y” was also not rounded, so I hand-drawn that in as well.

I especially observed the white space between the letters to understand how to space the characters.  I have read in Ken Barber’s book that the goal of a letterer is to create consistency within the piece of lettering by balancing its overall visual texture, commonly referred to as “colour”.  (Barber, 2020)

While working on these letters, I noticed the variation in the thickness of the letter’s strokes.  This is referred to as contrast. Barber says in his book it is good to evaluate your lettering as you work.  Does the overall colour look even?  What about the negative space?  Has the contrast been dealt with uniformly?  Are the proportions equal?  Successful lettering depends on how thoroughly these principles are applied. (Barber, 2020)

My appreciation for typography, in general, has always been heightened, although I have never seen a pangram, as seen in figure 1.  This was a fascinating exercise and opened my eyes to how many variations there can be with a few simple lines.  

There are many aspects to consider when creating a typeface, but the main principles are volume, spacing, contrast and proportion.  I am pleased with the finished lettering in figure 3, although some of the characters are too close together, such as “dog” and the “o” and “w” of brown.

Understanding how typefaces are constructed will be helpful to a Graphic Designer or Illustrator.

Research point

I will choose one of my favourite magazines, National Geographic (April 2002) and look at the primary typeface they use for the body text and headlines.  I will then try to identify the font by its distinguishing characteristics.

The typeface used for the headlines and body text is similar to Garamond Premier Pro with distinctive characteristics; the letterforms are an “e” with a small eye and the bowl of the “a” which has a sharp turn at the top left.

Garamond is often used in book printing and body text and is called the old-style of serif letter design.  Garamond types have quite expansive ascenders and descenders; printers at the time did not use leading. (Wikipedia, 2023)

Works Cited

Barber, K. (2020). House Industries Lettering Manual House. California, New York: Watson Guptill.

Wikipedia. (2023, April 12). Garamond. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garamond