A TYPEFACE CREATED BY KRISTEN BAKER

A TYPEFACE CREATED BY KRISTEN BAKER

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Background 4

Brainstorming 6

Inspiration 8

Rectangle Rule 10

Slants in Squares 12

Solving the Slant 14

Draper Book 16

Test Drive 20

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Draper’s unique stroke change was inspired from the beautiful stroke change that takes place in the timeless typeface Didot. After deciding that I wanted to create a typeface that has a significant weight change, and design atypeface specifically for fashion, my friend told me about the clothing company ModCloth. ModCloth is a totally online clothing store that carries “Vintage Clothing, Cute Dresses, Indie & Retro Women’s Clothing” as the slogan suggests, but the feel of the typeface that they use on the site is anything but that. So I proceded to design a typeface to be used on the site.

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When the sketches for Draper began, all that had been decided was that it needed to have curves. Designing was a struggle though, because all the sketches I drew were based on the “standard look” that a face has, and Draper is everything but “standard.” As sketching continued, I started to realized that I needed to stop being set on this “normal looking” face and push the boundries some. Once that started happeneing I realized that there was aparticular shape the letters I was drawing were fitting into, which was a rounded rectangle.

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As the rectangle started appearing in my letterforms, a very iconic shape from the 1950’s came to mind, the retro rectangle. It was very popular design element for wallpaper and other decorative items around the home in that day. It then hit me, “Why not fit the letters into the retro rectangles that were so popular in the 50’s?” Then the sketching began to create the letters. I followed the model of the rectangle precisely in making my letterforms taller and rounded to fit the form of the rectangle.

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Once inspiration hit, figuring out the faces’ system was next. As I studied the rectangles and thier weight changes, I thought the only way to stay true to the rectangle would be to fit the letters into it. Making the letters thickness change like the rectangles thickness did added to the system. The majuscule’s heaviest weight was placed on the top of the letter, where as the miniscule’s heaviest weight was placed on the left side, to create some contrast between the letters. The rest of the sides on both the majiscule’s and miniscule’s change depending on the side. To create unity throughtout the face, all the letters have the same bottom weight.

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During the creation of Draper there were four letter’s in particular that caused problems. I like to reffer to them as “slant letters”. These letters are the majuscule and miniscule K, M, and X, and the majuscule Y. These letters became most difficult to work with because I did not know how to make these letters rounded to fit in with the system, while making their weight change and keeping their shape true to the standard letter.

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Solving the slant was a process that I did digitally; and it was more difficult than I presumed. My challenge was to keep these letters following the system I had created. I had difficulty wrapping my mind around pushing the letters out to the edge of the rectangle because it seemed that the letters would lose their identity. The solution then came, to force the letters to look like rectangles, so that meant taking the slants and making them flat. Once the slants were flat, the rest of the letterform took its shape quite easily. The legs of the letter then just rounded up or down in the direction that it needed to go. Then these letters no longer stood out among the rest, but flowedperfectly together.

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