How divergent could a style be while remaining kindred? In what ways could weight, width, proportion, and construction be played with in order to create a varied family? Potential applications are as manifold as the individual styles therein, so it might be helpful to consider what Covik would not be suitable for: bibles, legal documents, warranties, directions on how to assemble something important, funeral home logos, and websites. Everything else is fair game.
Covik
Completed
2017
Deliverable
Unreleased Typeface
I digitized some of my lettering experiments, and tried to imagine what a whole paragraph might look like in a particular style.
Starting with the text component seemed to make the most sense, and I turned three of my most texty lettering experiments into barebones lowercase fonts.
Long story short, I didn’t like any of them, so it was back to the drawing board.
Unlike traditional type families whose members typically vary in weight and/ or width, the goal with this project was to create a robust family of different styles that complimented each other, and could be used for different purposes. To keep the family cohesive, I limited my sketching tools to just the brush pen. These initial doodles explored what the pen naturally wanted to do.
If it was even a little bit interesting, I sketched it. As ideas matured, I refined the sketch with larger pencil drawings.
In an effort to mine the past for styles that I could steal from, I explored the work of Hans Tisdall and other mid century lettering artists.
A new family emerged, featuring text and display styles that got along nicely.
The only problem was that it was boring, and felt like it belonged in a funeral home identity. I was desperate to take the work someplace more interesting, so I played with the italic until something interesting happened. Over many edits, it turned into something a bit more sparkly. The sparkle became the driving force behind most of the design decisions that were to come.
The italic then influenced the two display styles in the family.
