Choosing an image became my first step. I enjoyed seeing this image.
There are several unique characteristics to the letters painted here. Most typefaces resemble in some fashion geometric shapes. This graffiti is very curvy, and only at certain parts of the letter does it resemble a geometric shape. As a matter a fact, most of the letters do not have straight lines and those that do have them only at certain parts.
In addition, parts of the letter in graffiti also become part of the background of the image. One can see parts of the terminal of the S in the above picture form the background that outlines the word. Also, the thickness of the lines that create each letter varies as the letter is finally finished.
Further, because graffiti comes from a counter culture and anti hero perspective, it does not follow the rigid rules of geometric shapes and patterns. I attempted to replicate all of these characteristics in my font creation.
I began a few letters with a dedication to creating them as curvy as possible. I found out, however this would be extremely difficult. My first attempt is below.
FontStruct is a program that allows users to create fonts on a grid similar to graph paper. The user then chooses a block from what felt to me like a limited selection based on what my goals for the font. Most of the choices of bricks were geometric, which is typical of fonts throughout their history, and did not allow for the curviness I planned on creating. I decided to mimic instead of replicate the characteristics of graffiti in my font creation.
One can see in my second attempt I was able to vary the thickness of the letters. I even added arrows in some of the letters. By rule, most letters hit the baseline and stop, due to the social context of graffiti, hitting the baseline and stopping with my letters did not seem to fit that context. To exaggerate this context, I drew an arrow to show visually how the font adopts these traits.
Here is a screen shot of all my letters:
Link to my font.
I also had the opportunity to create my own color palette using Kuler. I chose to stick to the same theme, using the same image shown above. What I found interesting was while reading Gage on page thirty four, he discusses the three social divisions of color during the nineteenth century. Nobles were gold, freemen were red, and slaves were blue. One can see from the image above that it is done in many shades of blue. The history of rap music has many themes of oppression due to it typically being a medium for urban minorities to voice the oppressive practices of the status quo. To me, it makes sense for the street artist to use blue in this way for his work, even if he did not know of it consciously. It also sets a melancholy mood as is typical for blue as a color. Another interesting element is that the image is outlined with a shade of purple that I chose. Purple is an interesting contrast to the different shades of blue the artist used. It suggests to me that the artist may be suggesting a mood albeit melancholy, outlined by a potential for a happier situation
Link to my Color Palette.
