Abstracting a Letter in Illustrator

Explore the physical shapes of letters by abstracting a letter (basically blow up a type face).

• First set-up your page 8.5" x 8.5" square.
• Then select the "T" tool,
• Adjust the font to something Sans Serif, or a simple serif.
• Set the colour to black (it is the default).
• Adjust the size to fit whole page or beyond (each font responds differently in size).Use the scale tool to enlarge the font to extend beyond the print borders, size and the rotate to turn it, but don't flip or reflect it or stretch, or skew. 
• If it doesn't get large enough, then try to object>create outlines and then scale your letter.
• Abstract the letter so that you can barely recognize the letter, but retain the basic qualities of the letter to be able to identify it (with work). It sounds easy, but it is quite challenging to keep 'em guessing.
• Save As "AbstractLetter1.ai" 
• Then File> Save for Web and Devices- Select jpg and maximum quality.

Reverse your text and background so it is white text and background is black and letter is mirrored.

• Add another layer for the background
• Use the square tool and draw a background across the whole doc
• Select black for the fill.
• Select the letter using the "T" tool to  
• Then turn the fill to white and stroke to black.
• Use the reflect tool
• Flipped so it could be read in the mirror (if it wasn't abstracted).
• Save As "AbstractLetter2.ai" 
• Then File> Save for Web and Devices- Select jpg and maximum quality.
•  Post both Abstract Letters to your blog.
• Then print out each letter. We will tack them on the board and have a guessing game.

Self-Evaluate your Font

Post your font to your blog and answer the following questions:

1. What sort of personality does your font have?
2. How does this font represent you?
3. Where could your font be used? What sort of document? What will it say? What audience?
4. Title your font in a descriptive way,  what would you call it? Type your font title using the font and post it to your blog. Post Your whole font family.

Evaluate your font:

1. Does your font family have a familial resemblance [ie. a-c-e-o have similar bowl sizes, b-d-p-q, have similar bowl sizes and stem sizes, the stems connect to the bowls in a similar way, h-m-n the shoulders are similar, stem sizes are the same through out]. Use some of the terminology to describe and analyze. /10 marks
2. Is your font original? Does it have a resemblance to another font?    /5 marks
3. Does it reflect you?   /5 marks
4. Lower, uppercase, special characters are included in your font family.    /10 marks
5. Each letter/glyph has been placed on a glyph grid and converted to a type-able font. /5 marks

Total /35

Your Personalized Font

Once you have sketched out the basic outline of your font idea,

• Scanned your font and placed it into Adobe Illustrator.
• Form your font family in Illustrator- using the pen tool. 
• Make sure to include Upper and Lower case letters, punctuation and special characters too.
• Group letters if there are disconnected parts- You will need to Shift select all parts to each letter and then Object>Group your letters to connect all parts to each glyph. 
• We are going to use this font editor/creator: http://www.myscriptfont.com/

Here are other font creators/editors- some cost money, some don't:
http://fontforge.org/
http://www.fontlab.com/

Post your finished font alphabet onto your blog. Create a name for your font.
Due Friday, Oct, 16

A Visit from the Art Institute of Vancouver

The Arts Institute came to visit today
https://www.artinstitutes.edu/vancouver/