You're the inspiration

Today I attended a logotyping workshop where we practiced drawing a custom typeface by hand. The idea was to adapt an existing style of type to express a particular persona, and I chose Jenna, so I tried to make it a little cute and bright, with big rounded counterspaces and decorative serifs. I still based it on a sophisticated Didone, though; she did get an A on her math test today after all.

I was kind of surprised how much I missed Illustrator. That program's been so frustrating for me, but I think I'm gradually getting the hang of it, and being able to move bezier points after you draw a form is just an invaluable tool for this sort of thing that you really can't get with pencil and paper. It's just going to be neater. Speaking of neater, I think the best tip I learned at the typeface workshop was the general principle that the fewer bezier points you have, the stronger your form. This seems like it could be useful outside of type design, too, and gives me some focus in what skills I should hone in the program (manipulating handles).

I was also influenced by the lecture to do some research on the Gestalt Principles--psychologically based theories of visual perception developed in Germany in the 1920s. They are similarity, continuation, closure, proximity, and figure/ground. This seems like it'll be a useful vocabulary for a while, and I'm going to try to keep it in mind as I continue working on the Groundwire identity.