Alphabet Soup : Illustrator

To showcase our growing software skills we have to create one of our ten letterforms digitally and make them into a full typeface. I created my typeface on photoshop then traced from it, this time we had to use Adobe Illustrator.


When I produced this design on Photoshop I drew one piece of popcorn and duplicated it several times changing the shape each time. I layered these piece up on top of an existing letterform which meant the popcorn was sticking out of the letterform. I really liked this style but I wanted to try a different method on Illustrator.

 I first drew around a piece of popcorn with the pen tool. I added small circular lines and used the width tool to give the pieces a bit of edge. I then duplicated it making some of the pieces smaller. I filled a 10x10 square with different sized popcorn and added another layer containing a letter, I then masked the popcorn square with the letterform to create the effect of the popcorn inside the letterform.

 The effect I ended up with was very different to my hand rendered letterforms but I did find it quite interesting.

I chose to recreate my ten letterforms in black and white to show my understanding of Illustrator.  I am going to create the whole alphabet in this style but I am also going to experiment with colour. I will also try out this style with uppercase letterforms and glyphs.


Experimenting with Adobe Illustrator

As part of this brief we are allowed to use colour. Obviously the colour I chose was yellow. First I quickly chose a musky yellow as I am only experimenting and this will not be in my final designs. I created one piece of popcorn and duplicated it many times in different sizes and from different angles which I then built up into a large shape of overlapped popcorn pieces. I masked the design with an A to get the effect that the popcorn is inside the letterform. 

 I think this worked really well though it did not create the same effect I had when I hand drew my letterforms.

As I had created this set of popcorn pieces on an A4 sheet when I transferred the whole image onto a 10x10cm box it came out like this (Above). This does not work as it is too overpowering and bold. I had already produced my popcorns on a 10x10cm box and would have to alter them and add colour.

I thought that my popcorn piece didn't look very believable, I decided to experiment with shadows. I added a small shadow to this piece but I found that it still looked quite fake. This could be a good thing or a negative thing as I have not specified whether my popcorn was meant to look real or not. 

I experimented further with shadows and the effect of them in a layered format. This idea has not worked as it is not clear which piece is which as they all merge together. 

As I used Illustrator more I became more confident with the pen tool and chose to draw a few more versions of popcorn. During my initial research for the alphabet soup task I found that popcorn did not look perfectly round and that no two pieces are the same. I experimented with 3 pieces of popcorn which I then used in my final design.

To create my final typeface I continued to mask all of my letterforms to a 10x10cm box full of my new popcorn images. I added colour to each one. I chose Yellow but decided to use a few variations of it. I think it worked really well though I do think it looks more effective in black and white. These are some of the things I must consider when I come to print my work.

I also chose to experiment with my typeface in lowercase.

Putting my typeface into practice

After playing around with my typeface and putting it into words I think I prefer the black and white version as I do not think I have chosen the correct colours. This is something I hope to improve on during the course and my first year.