Create a letter

This brief was found online due the website, typefight.com. The brief was :

Typefight are looking for submissions or a well-crafted letter or number.

This letter or number can be drawn in any way or style; it’s a personal choice.

TypeFight is a website where designers will submit there designs for a letter or number. The design then goes against another one of the same glyph and one is voted best by the members of the login.

This is a very open brief, where it is down to skill and design rather than the concept behind it. Because of this, I was able to go straight in with a sketch and develop it from there. This brief was a good way to explore and develop my digital skills.

I sketched the letter B because it is a favourite letter of mine to draw. I think the shapes you can create from it are interesting and good to work with. From there I used the pen tool to draw over it. At this point I was trying to hand draw the lines in between, as some detail but learned how to create that effect in one click.

Once I was happy with the shape and detail it was a case of changing the colours and effect to achieve the level of detail and skill I hoped for.

The next part of the design process was going through styles and trying to add to the design so it wasn’t so flat.

Looking at the website, a lot of the designs had a lot of detail, textures and effects on theres. I want to be able to do designs similar to that, so learning how to do that was important.  

The lines within the B looked good until colour was added, from there they were taken out and the background was concentrated on. 

The colour blue was used a lot so that the viewer would not link it to barbie in anyway. As it is quite similar. 

Lighter blues and greys were added to give it more depth and interest.

A lot of the process was obsessing with lines and curves. I had to make sure they looked the right amount of width and followed the line of the curve. I was adding the white drop shadow by hand. I chose white because it made the shape more visible, like using negative space. 

I added the gradient so the design wasn't so flat and boring.. Looking back at the other entries of Typefight, the majority use textures for detail. The gradient gives the design a bit more depth.

Final 

After the changes in colour, it was stripped back, to shadows and lines. This is a much more successful looking design for this letter. Although it’s not full of colour and textures, like the ones on the website, it was still a test for me. 

This brief was good to teach myself to use Illustrator properly, how to use the pen tool, how to create correct lines properly, use shadows and gradients. This brief mainly for a learning experience as well as designing a letter good.