My First Typeface!

Braille-abet

I am learning about typeface (or fonts).  After a first class that was mostly a history and classification lesson, our assignment was to develop our own font using a grid of squares or dots.  Mid-week, I had a eureka moment to combine both squares and dots in a typeface that would have Braille embedded as part of each character it represented.  Since each Braille character is made up of a combination of dots in a 2x3 dot grid, it was important that the Braille appear at the same location in each letter so that the alignment would be correct for actually reading Braille.  Some Braille dots ended up adjacent to rather than embedded within a character, which added... um... more character?

WiP - sketchbook

Above is my sketchbook showing the Braille alphabet and the basic grid structure that was used for each letter.  There were specific rules that I applied in order to build consistency in the typeface.

WiP - drawn on trace

Notice how many times the letter 'V' was attempted on trace?  Letters 'X' and 'K' were also tricky because I did not want a stepped look for the angled parts of the letter.  An implied angle was the solution that I liked.

It was also tricky trying to differentiate a 'D' from an 'O' and from the number '0'.  I really like the solution for zero with implied slash line.

The font was constructed online using FontStruct.

The class text book is, Thinking with Type, an excellent resource.