Explore the history behind Chaparral Pro and develop a narrative for a 2-page spread. Consider characteristics of the glyphs as well as its biography, intended use, medium, etc.
Prompt
Research + First Essay Draft (website resources)
Carol Twombly was a RISD graduate who worked with the Adobe Originals program to create a series of high quality digital typefaces. She is most well known for her work on Trajan and Myriad, the former of which drew heavily from historical sources.
After retiring (citing a lack of interest in developing any more digital typefaces), Twombly now pursues independent artistry in various mediums and arts & crafts.
My first draft was a basic overview of the Chaparral Pro font. I haven’t figured out my narrative yet; I’m waiting until I have a better feel of my font and how it plays with formatting and composition.
Spread Explorations
Since the project is meant to be a spread for a book, I focused on imagery as the main point of emphasis. Some concepts explored include the use of justified text, running titles/images over margins, and stacking paragraphs. My experience with National Geographic has certainly influenced these explorations.
Imagery Explorations
Given the all-purpose reliable nature of Chaparral, I want to explore themes of sturdiness and rugged utility- think something like an amiable cowboy. Given my work on a previous project analyzing National Geographic, I think there’s a bit of nice overlap as far as imagery goes. Chaparral is nicely suited for captions and titles, so something like Italic Bold Display would work for a single phrase of emphasis. I immediately thought of Mark Maggiori’s stunning Western oil paintings. Besides that, I am looking into imagery relevant to Carol Twombly or Chaparral itself.
Narrative Development/ Essay Revision (post crit)
Given Chaparral’s broad applications and status as a successful hybrid typeface, I elected to push the “old reliable” narrative further. Everyone likes an all-purpose general tool that does everything well, right?
Crit Notes:
- Move beyond cowboy imagery. The connections here are cursory at best-consider delving into the glyphs themselves!
- Justified text may work better for a more geometric typeface and aesthetic. Consider alternatives that might fit Chaparral better.
- Explore titles in other weights! Chaparral’s strengths lie in the diverse selection of looks available for any purpose. Really analyze the letterform and figure out what succeeds.
- Suggestion: Use the literal forms of the glyph as a foundation for formatting your paragraphs. How can you suggest the structure and underlying characteristics of Chaparral without explicitly showing them?
- Explore the “rise of the digital era” narrative a bit more. Around this time, design and print are becoming more accessible. What does Carol Twombly, woman designer, bring to the table with an innovative hybrid typeface?
Explorations, Cont. 10/4
Printing out the glyphs on 11x17 allowed me to scrutinize every detail of the letterforms. Here are some takeaways:
- The hybrid look comes from subtle “human” strokes that vary in width working along more geometric serifs that vary in taper from barely noticeable to visibly angular.
- Bow curves display a irregular asymmetry that communicates humanist style.
- Joins between strokes are either “hard” corners or “soft” curves, with the former being more common. Also, some curved strokes suggest a “hard” corner without actually being one: most noticeably in the bottom half of a lowercase (two story) g.
- Certain strokes curtail in a slight curve, rather than two angular corners. Again, this suggests the presence of a brush.
I researched a few vintage cars that might provide an alternative to imagery without losing that element of vintage ruggedness I liked in the Western paintings. Traits I searched for were ones similar to Chaparral: a hybrid aspect that provided flexibility, and some sort of “retro” homage similar to the roman strokes.
I’m currently playing around with setting the layout using the proportions of my typeface. Chaparral has a pretty tall x height relative to the cap height, and I’m curious to see what I can do with it.
By magnifying the letterforms to the point of abstraction, I hope to highlight the subtle traits that distinguish Chaparral and its hybrid-ness.
Refining (Still Exploring) 10/5
As I continue to refine this idea, I want to stay as far away as possible from being too literal with my imagery. This will mean pushing the limits of abstraction going forward. Behind the scenes, I’m trying to incorporate letter proportions into the placement of my text and imagery to give a secret level of structure to an otherwise simple composition.
Alternatively, I will continue to adjust the layout of this page. It still feels a little empty- I need to figure out how best to utilize the space I’ve been given without resorting to making the imagery the main focus. I shrunk down the picture to give it more of a retro feeling, like a photograph album rather than a sleek magazine spread.
Narrowing Focus 10/6
Reflecting on critique and the work I saw from my classmates, I’ve realized I shouldn’t try to approach my spread with conventional imagery or graphic style. Chaparral lacks a rich infusion of history or cultural origin. It was designed for broad utility by a pragmatic (though not unsentimental) hand, and I believe the best way of showing this typeface’s character is to dive into its literal form. For this reason, I will be abandoning the car narrative and sticking solely on examining Chaparral’s hybrid-ness.
There’s enough to work with in the letterform angle, but I need to find more meat for the bones, so to speak. I begin by revising my essay. Specifically, I analyze the strokes more and elaborate on how its hybrid qualities succeed.
I explored zooming in on different letters and various layouts that “flowed”, as well as some color changes.
One happy accident I discovered in the lowermost right one was how the curve of the G mimicked a rising sun over a flat plane. Maybe there’s something there?
Otherwise, I feel as though my first iteration was the most solid. Most of my attention moving forward will be directed toward the blue G and my original.
One challenge I need to address quickly is what kind of text I’ll use to showcase the different weights. A multipurpose font like Chaparral basically requires that I highlight its varied looks.
Final Iterations 10/7
I was too averse to showing the literal letterform in my previous iterations. The problem is that a more abstract zoom-in representation is lost on the viewer- they might not even know they’re looking at a letterform. Following my last critique before presentation, I decided it would be better to zoom out. The question now is how I’ll balance the dynamism and eye-grabbing qualities of my previous work while mixing in more readability and ease of understanding.
My priority is still highlighting the double nature of Chaparral’s line quality. As I iterated, I was experimenting with how best to do this without being too literal. But maybe it was better to be literal and well-understood than abstract and unintelligible.
I moved from capital B to capital R, as the form offered a bit more visual interest and movement to the spread. All the while, I was still figuring out how to do design call-outs without occupying more space than I was already pushing. The last thing I wanted to do was add more text boxes.
The question of color was one that I was slowly arriving at an answer to. By color-coding the written word with my call-outs, I could subtly point to them without being too obvious and throwing off the balance of my composition.
Reflection
Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up all kinds of hypothetical design justifications that ruin the final product. Part of the reason why this happens is because of an over reliance on intuition and preconceived notions of what the project should look like. The fix is to make a wide range of iterations and constantly seek feedback. I’m looking forward to the motion graphic project.
