Brief 4 - Layout Experiments

So because I can't help but try how something would work before collecting together everything that I need and what not, I decided to have a quick play around with possible layout ideas for the pages in the doodle book that would contain the letterforms. I'm a lot of decisions away from even properly considering these yet but just wanted to have a see.

I went for a typical A5 size for the pages, and imagined that it would be bound down the left side and having the pages horizontal so left space down the left side for the binding. This obviously may change when I come to actually beginning to produce this but yeah.

I started out experimenting with Helvetica Neue.

Considering the A5 scale, having the letterform be as big as it can on the page would be too big.

Tried it with both upper and lower case, and not so keen on it so made the official decision now to just use uppercase letterforms.

Tried the one letter to a page again, but this time with more white space around it. This is 400pt size.

Tried more letterforms at this scale on the page. I think they're too big. I want the areas to be big enough to doodle on, but not too big that it would become more than just a doodle, if that makes sense.

I reduced the size to 300pt and decided to try having two letterforms on the page. Works well with A and B with a 100pt size space between them, but doesn't really carry well then across other letterform pairs that it would fall on. If I decided to go ahead with this I would need to find a size and space size that would work best across every pair.

Reduced the size again to 200pt, and decided to tryout having 4 letterforms to a page. I think these are a decent size, not too big or too small. 

This carries out well across more combinations of the letterforms that would fit together on to a page. Obviously I haven't spent too long with the spacing and lining them up as I just wanted to get an idea of what it would be like for now.

Decided to try a different approach though. Although the previous with 4 letterforms works, I don't think they would turn out to be that aesthetically pleasing, so decided to try dropping them all on to one line at the same pt size, and having 3 per layout. The white space around the letterforms works a lot better. Think I prefer this one to the previous one.

Due to the width of the I and J letterforms being rather shorter than the others, I managed to get the J on to the same layout with the I, which gives me 4 on that page, but takes up pretty much the same surface area as the others so doesn't look out of place. This left the Z as a lonely letter on its own at the end though, but then gave me the idea to try out having glyphs too, which I think would be a nice added extra. This works well with this typeface.

Decided that I need to try out the experiments that I have done with the other typefaces that I have decided on to see if any of them work better/not as good using them. So next I tried out Futura.

Then I tried out Gotham.

Then I tried Univers.

And finally Gill Sans.

As the typefaces were getting bolder, the layouts from the experiments I did originally with the thinnest one of the five I am using start to not really work. Even on the last one using the same point size some of the letterforms go off the page a bit. Hmm. Like I explained at the beginning of the post they're just quick experiments and will obviously need a lot more effort going into them. Once I start making decisions and what not I will have a clearer idea for what I need to do and what not.