Ecoscape Display Font
Type DesignEcoscape is an all caps display font inspired by ecobrutalism (the aesthetic mixture of nature and brutalist architecture). I created this font togain a deeper understanding of typography and to explore my personal style.
Process
Conceptualize
I’m drawn to ecobrutalism not purely on aesthetics because it is a future-forward style. I believe that in the field that inspires me so much, architecture, the future lies in infusing as much natural elements into our structures as possible. The practical benefits of this being more efficient temperature regulation, increased air quality, and a positive effect on our mental health. The concept of ecobrutalism resonates with my values as a designer, that is, creating with a focus on aesthetic beauty, functionality, and earth/human centered, future-focused design.
Moodboard
Gathering photos of the visual world I want the font to live in.
Sketch
After beginning my sketches, I quickly formed two different visual directions. With the observation that one direction looked like the newest Kia logo, I chose what my gut felt was more interesting. I chose the more blocky direction with structurally sound forms that can curve organically and little indents inspired by wood splitting or concrete cracking.
Meeting with a Type Designer
After rendering a couple letters in Illustrator, I got some input from an alumni, Martin Brendecke, a type designer studying at Ésad Amiens. Martin gave me the suggestion to make my slats/indents much larger and more intentional in the composition. Martin also gave me the invaluable advice to use H’ and O’ (a round letter and a straight letter) to space every other letter off of. I continued to meet Martin throughout my journey where he helped me seewhether a letter was wide, regular, or skinny, whether the spacing was tracked loose or tight, and he taught me more tricks of the trade that I would not have learned by myself.
Go visit Martin’s website: martinbrendecke.com to see more beautiful type design.
Illustrator
Created 26 350x350px artboards to make is easy to export each letter as an svg and make sure each letter is the same size. Once I built a couple letters I was able to reuse elements to build the rest, with many tweaks of course because optical consistency is more important than metric consistency.
Font Forging - Spacing & Export
Finally, I used the free and open source font creator Font Forge to apply spacing to the left, right, top, and bottom of each letter examining the spacial relationship between each of them along the way. Just spacing most often wasn’t enough however, I had to consantly go back into Illustrator to edit letters to get them just right. Once I liked how all letters interacted with each other, I was able to export the font as an open type .otf file which I can now use in any program that allows the use of downloaded fonts.
As a big THANK YOU for reading, here is Ecoscape -> Download Ecoscape.otf