OUGD603 - Brief 01 - Sierra - Digital Development

Following on from the feedback received, I have developed some digital ideas.



1st Ideas

By using the sketches and grid created in the previous stage a variety of digital identities have been made. As it was suggested that a custom typeface would most likely appeal to a client, no typeface was chosen to use when making these ideas; instead, individual letters have been made by hand and recreated in Illustrator. Because mountains and cliffs have very sharp edges, I have kept the type quite angular and defined to link in with the 'Sierra' definition.

2nd Ideas

As B&R were happy for me to develop forward some border and shape ideas from concept 2, I have chosen to incorporate them into the 3rd concept.

Before anything else, I have chosen three main typefaces to use as part of the third concept. In terms of typeface choices, characteristics found in the research stage associated with the definitions of 'Sierra' were used. The first typeface I have chosen is Mono Regular. It is very angular, relating to the sharp peaks of mountains, and letters have a high overall x-height, linking to the sheer vertical size of some Sierras.

The second typeface I have chosen is BauTF Bold. The letters in this typeface are both straight and curved in their appearance, which links to the form of morse code itself, which is made up of circles and dashes. As sans-serif typefaces are 'easier to read at a distance' (Walker, 2014), this typeface is very suitable for placement on a superyacht, as the name will need to be easily legible from afar. The bold appearance attempts to strengthen the identities presence.

As the first two typefaces chosen are sans-serif, a serif typeface has been chosen to offer B&R an alternative. Truesdell Std has been picked because the letter 'e' and tail on 'a' point in a direction similar to the grid created in the idea generation stage, inspired by the direction of peaks. It is almost half way between the first and second typefaces chosen in terms of letter thickness and x-heights, which gives B&R the chance to clearly pick between the three and their specific styles.
To produce the stretched type identities, the morse code for 'Sierra' firstly needs to be divided into sections. The grid created by doing so in Illustrator can be seen below. The 'Sierra' type has been placed on the baseline in the three different typefaces. Each letter has then be stretched within the guides made.

The stretching method has worked rather well; the only problem that has arisen is that with the width of the 'e' letter, as letters are not able to be stretched that thin without losing their typographicc style. For this reason, the 'e' letters have been stretched to double the distance seen in the initial template. The result of this process can be seen below.

To produce a wider range of ideas, I have incorporated the 2nd concept with the type produced. A range of of border ideas that incorporate the morse code dots have been generated to accompany the type. The 6 main variations produced for each typeface can be seen below.