Zhu Ti — a typeface inspired by the shapes and arrangement of buildings. It is based on a combination of architectural patterns, gaps, and irregular angles, giving the set of designan interesting sense of rhythm.

EXPLORATIONAt the initial stage of the project, examples of typography that interest me were recorded to serve as inspiration for the concept of the font. It was a very open-ended exploration process without much direction, but even if the examples I found in the beginning do not relate to the final font directly, they gave me a chance to reecognize my own visual sensibilities.

But I soon found that I should not limit myself to pure typographic observation. I examined my general sense of aesthetics, and looked for things in the environment that I like.

I recognized that the geometry of buildings have always fascinated me from the photos I have taken in the past. I enjoy treating the outlines of buildings and their structures as graphical elements when composing my pictures, so I began to actively observe the architecture around me. Other elements such as the steel bars on signboards, the arrangement of air conditioners, and various architectural patterns were also noted, in order to enrich the visual vocabulary to be applied to my font.

As I mentioned, certain architecture has always given me a feel that I like, but I found it hard to interpret the atmosphere visually at first. I am a fan of geometric fonts, and knew I would probably attempt a structural-looking system on the heavy side, but the challenge was to avoid making a typical geometric font that could have been made without the observation I had done.

To make a typefacebased on real life observation.

In the end, I believe I have understood what makes me like a certain type of buildings. I find patterns and other forms of visual repetitions pleasing to the eye, but I realized that it is not the identical shapes themselves being repeated that interests me. Rather, it is the small angles, gaps and corners between the repeating/overlapping shapes that emerge when I view it at an angle. This is also consistent with my liking for typography that contains special details, as I found when photographing real life examples.

Far left: a photo taken by me from before. Not done for this research, but it reinforces the fact that I am interested in shapes and patterns on buildings.

There is a sense of rhythm to the way the buildings rise up or go down that jumps out at me. Many existing geometric fonts have cleanly-cut-off strokes with very clear corners and gaps, and after my visual research, I saw what I could do with my font; I decided to give my design that rhythmic beat I observed from buildings which is not always fixed. The patterns have both a consistentency and a subtle irregularity among the overlapping shapes.

Examples with typographic rhythmsand other details that are closer to what I have in mind.

DEVELOPMENTAbove: The use of repetition began very early on in the experimentationRight: Attempts at generating strokes from reflections/shadows of windows and air conditioner vents

A simple grid was tried, but following it strictly to create a heavy structure was problematic for Chinese strokes.

The outlines of photos I took were traced for inspiration. I was aware that it is pointless to copy the observation directly into my font, but doing this was what made me aware of the small interesting gaps within the structures. It gave me a much clearer direction I wanted to take.

Inspired by the ways in which shapes bend and meet in the traced outlines of the buildings I photographed, I tried to translate the interesting angles into strokes. Aiming to capture only the essence of my observation, I decided to just apply two fixed angles to unify the set of fonts in the end.

The slanted angles joining together and echoing each other is a prominant characteristic for evoking the atmosphere and sense of rhythm.

This proportion was chosen because I feel that a wider character would enhance the structural feel of the font. It is also a necessary for accommodating the thickness of the vertical strokes.

Basic strokes that make up the typeface

The font is not just about the boldness of the vertical strokes; heavy-looking structural fonts are not unusual, but since the smaller gaps and corners are what make buildings interesting to me, I have deliberately chosen horizontal strokes that end at a 45 degree angle, so that interesting negative space will be created within a character.

On one hand, the angles gives the characters a degree of unity, but furthermore, the set angles sometimes forces characters to be composed uniquely around the different sections of a character, which gives the special sense of rhythm in my opinion.

The high contrast between the horizontal and vertical strokes produces interesting gaps in the characters I was trying to capture, but as a side effect, characters with few and many strokes differ vastly in terms of visual weight if only one type of strokes are used.

The angle is an important part of my font, but it also makes certain words difficult to make.A balance between embracing the characteristic of my font and the proper composition of a character.

To reduce this problem, secondary strokes were introduced, which, although might be lighter than the main strokes, helped maintain the overall weight of the characters. Further fine-tuning was made to unify the size of the characters as best as possible.

ADJUSTMENTS

APPLICATIONS/EXPERIMENTATIONS

Jonathan Mak Long10217223d