This project was done in my second semester of Calligraphy and Type Design. The final project for this semester was to design a font with requirements from our professor which were determined by a random generator. My font should be in sans serif, semi bold and italic. To implement our font design, we first made sketches on paper and then used the website “fontsruct” to create them digitally. I wanted to create a font that I could also use myself. That’s why I decided to take a futuristic path and draw inspiration from all sorts of „Y2K“ fonts.
When I had created my analog concepts and had my professor’s blessing to implement them, I only realized how complicated I had made things for myself. Since the „fontstruct“ page works with a diamond system like a block sheet, I had to build up each letter in great detail. This process took a lot of time and effort, but it was worth it. It was also important to pay attention to the spacing between the letters and that they do not differ in size and shape. What made it really hard was my requirement to make the font italic.
Since the website is mainly divided into vertical and horizontal sections, I often made mistakes in the proportions of the letters to each other. The letters R, B, K, Z, P, Q and X in particular took several hours. All in all I’m very happy with the finished product, although a few finishing touches could be made here and there.
Finally, as the inventors of our own typeface, we were of course allowed to give them our own name. I decided on “DM-12”. This is the name of the model of the DeLorean from the film series „Back to the Future“. Because of the futuristic look of my font, I found this very fitting.
