TABLE OF CONTENTS
INSTRUCTIONS
To start this task, I first thought of several potential fonts that I could develop. I thought to have 3 different ideas, one that has influences of Indonesian culture/history, one that solves an issue/provides convenience, and another that expands upon my previous work.
After some thinking, I decided to go with these three topics and arranged them into a presentation:
Fig 1.1 Font Proposal Presentation / Week 9 (18/06/25)
In the end, I chose to go with the colonial-era inspired font as that is the font I would realistically use in my works. The other fonts might look more unique but their use case is much more niche, and that's why I decided to scrap it. From there, I started gathering more references to help me create a more accurate representation of that historical typographic style.
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| Fig 1.2 Extra References / Week 9 (18/06/25) |
I then started working in Illustrator by setting up the artboard first. I made a 25px grid system across the artboard and from there, I decided the x-height (500px), cap height (650px), alongside the ascender (675px) and descender (-175px) line. I also set some rules for me to follow so that my font is consistent.
- Every stroke is 50px wide
- Every outer corner is rounded to 10px
- Every inner corner is rounded to 5px
- For naturally curved corners, it is rounded to >100px
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| Fig 1.3 Illustrator Guidelines / Week 9 (18/06/25) |
Following the grid and guidelines, I made rectangles to get the basic shape of each letter before merging and shaping them. I was quite unsatisfied with how it looked because if I wanted to follow the style of my references, there was not much room for unique designs. One thing that I could do was having curves in usually straight strokes. I decided to leave it as it is for now to wait for further feedback and a better design direction.
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| Fig 1.4 Initial Design Process / Week 9 (24/06/25) |
Week 10 / Revision
After the feedback, I tried to create more contrast by adding weight differences, specifically for the vertical strokes. The design process was the same as the previous one, but I decided to not use that much curves anymore, and use straight strokes since curving them too much looked odd.
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| Fig 1.5 Font Revision / Week 10 (01/07/25) |
I was quite satisfied with the uppercase designs, but not so much with the lowercase as they looked a bit off. After some discussions, turns out having a larger weight on just one vertical stroke was what made the appearance off. So, I end up reverting back to the thinner stroke version.
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| Fig 1.6 Reverting / Week 10 (01/07/25) |
Week 11 / Revision
After some more feedbacks, I just decided to scrap everything and start from a clean slate. After testing multiple designs, nothing seemed to work. The straight strokes looked boring and makes the whole typeface lack identity. On the other hand, the curved strokes just didn't look right even after trying out different designs. So, I thought why not get the best of both worlds and use the straight strokes as a base, and adding in the curved ones if it could still fit in with the style.
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| Fig 1.7 Re-Editing / Week 11 (08/07/25) |
With the same concept, I continued finishing the whole font. I also added in some arrows because they fit with the signs that I took reference from. Not only that, most arrow symbols don't look that good, so I have to make them myself in my projects. If I make a font with an arrow design I like, this would be very convenient.
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| Fig 1.8 Other Glyphs / Week 11 (08/07/25) |
Although there were definitely challenges while designing this font; like rethinking how some letters should look like, the design process was relatively straightforward that I don't think highlighting it would be that interesting. However, designing the ampersand took way too much time as finding out a design that fits with the other glyphs was somehow very hard to me.
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| Fig 1.9 Ampersand Design / Week 11 (08/07/25) |
After everything I wanted in the font are completed, I put them into Fontlab to set their sidebearing and kernings.
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| Fig 1.10 Fontlab Process / Week 11 (08/07/25) |
I initially wanted to follow the sidebearing guide provided by Mr. Vinod, but with how similar my letters are in shape and width, it is almost like a monospaced font. So I decided to not completely follow it, but rather have it as a suggestion instead.
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| Fig 1.11 Sidebearings / Week 11 (08/07/25) |
Week 12 / Finalization
Because I fell sick the past week, I didn't manage to finish a lot and ended up not finishing the target. So I have to try and finish the kerning, font presentation, and applications as fast as I could.
Because of the shape of my letters, some of them might not looked balanced when paired with each other. Because of this, I used a tedious system which allows me to check the kerning of all possible combinations. This process took an incredibly long time, but if not done, some of the fonts might look wonky.
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| Fig 1.12 Kerning / Week 12 (15/07/25) |
For the punctuations, not much had to be tweaked as the sidebearings set were already sufficient. However, certain cases like for 'T', 'F', 'V', etc. had to paid extra attention to due to their shape.
With the finished font, I started designing some of my initial ideas for my font presentation. However, Mr. Vinod said that these were not playful enough and I had to find other layouts that could showcase this font in an interesting way.
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| Fig 1.14 Initial Presentation Designs / Week 12 (15/07/25) |
Week 13 / Finalization
With my finalized font, I worked on the presentations first. I took a surprising amount of time on these, with some taking a day to finish. It was mostly finding out interesting ways to display the font in a manner that suits the style of my font which was hard as this font doesn't have the most unique features.
For all of my presentations, I layered different textures to achieve an old paper look. I also added a noise texture and some gaussian blur on the work itself to really push the old look. As a result, I came up with these:
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| Fig 1.15 Font Presentation Variations / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
As for the font applications, the process was pretty straightforward. I looked up mockups that would be suitable with my font, and I designed the contents that would fit the mockup. Because I had lots of yellow/brown in my presentation, I decided to introduce blue as an accent color so that my applications would pop more. Finally, I cropped them to fit into the 1024x1024px restrictions.
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| Fig 1.16 Font Applications / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
Final Type Exploration & Application
Batavia - A vernacular font inspired by the typography found in Indonesia during the Dutch Colonial Era.
Download the font here: Batavia
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| Fig 1.19 Font Presentation #1 - PNG / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
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| Fig 1.20 Font Presentation #2 - PNG / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
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| Fig 1.21 Font Presentation #3 - PNG / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
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| Fig 1.22 Font Presentation #4 - PNG / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
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| Fig 1.23 Font Presentation #5 - PNG / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
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| Fig 1.24 Font Application #1 - PNG / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
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| Fig 1.25 Font Application #2 - PNG / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
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| Fig 1.26 Font Application #3 - PNG / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
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| Fig 1.27 Font Application #4 - PNG / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
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| Fig 1.28 Font Application #5 - PNG / Week 13 (22/07/25) |
Fig 1.29 Font Presentation & Application - PDF / Week 13 (22/07/25)
FEEDBACK
Week 9
Specific Feedback:
- First Font: The attempt looks good, lots of Dutch-East-Indie fonts should be analyzed to ensure that the characteristics of the font is properly portrayed. As for the old writing method, the software of the font has to force certain combinations of letters to become the intended letter instead.
- Second Font: The construction of the font would be easier to do, but with the way the font is designed, kerning each of the letters will be more tedious to finish.
Week 10
General Feedback:
The current design lacks contrast as it is all thin straight lines. Try other variations that has more contrast, be it from different weights or weights that flare.
Week 11 General Feedback: Observe punctuation design conventions so that they look correct.
Specific Feedback:
- The variation in stroke weight makes the lowercase letters appear unconventional and out of place. Observe other fonts create contrast so the design doesn't look too out of place.
- Return to the previous design where there is no changes in the stroke weights and have curvier strokes.
Week 12 *Absent*
Week 13 Specific Feedback:
- The font design is good to go.
- Try more playful designs for the font presentation and don't stick to just full displays of the font itself.
REFLECTIONS
Experience
This task truly took a lot of time. I spent so much time kerning every possible letter combinations and figuring out a playful layout for a rather basic font. Not to mention, I had to recreate my font again due to poor design choices. Despite that though, I was happy with how the font turned out because I achieved my personal goal of creating a font I would actually use.
Observation
I did the same mistake I did last semester when I looked back on my previous blog. I completely forgot that last semester, I made the vertical weight of my font thicker on only one side. This caused the font to look weird and I had to redesign it. This will definitely be something I will keep in the back of my head.
Findings
The main thing I found out this task was that I to improve I shouldn’t be afraid of doing something more 'organic'. I regretted not working on my other font ideas because they would turn out pretty cool too.
FURTHER READING
Typographic Design: Form and Communication
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| Fig 2.1 Typographic Design: Form and Communication Book Cover |
I decided to read the Typographic Design book again, especially the part about spacing, because I have problems with spacing in my current font. Spacing is really important for how easy the text is to read. If it’s too tight or too wide, it can mess up the flow and make the text look uneven. Good spacing should match the width of the letters, but it’s not always exact as it depends on how it looks. I think by reading more and practicing, I can get better at seeing what spacing works best.
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| Fig 2.2 Spacing |