Punctuation, Ligatures and Emojis

09.10.16

For the creation of of a character it was decided to go with the phrase ‘What the hell!?’. This phrase was chosen due to it being a phrase that is commonly used by a wide variety of people and therefore could be beneficial having a character developed to allow it to be used quickly and efficiently.

Figure 1

In Figure 1, these are examples of the original sketches that were later on developed to create the final designs for the character. The designs took on the forms of the letters ‘WTH’.  

The idea behind the design that was decided on was that the original letter forms would still be somewhat present within the design. The design took the form of the ‘W’ resting on the baseline with the left hand stem of the ‘W’ as the ascender. This left hand stem also represented the ‘t’ by the horizontal line across it that was incorporated into the design. The right hand stem however is curved to allow  there to be an incorporation of a lower case ‘h’ within the design. This can all be seen in figure 2 which is the final design created.

Figure 2

The phrase ‘What the hell’ is seen to be very aggressive and so this emotion has tried to be portrayed within the design. The strong, dark lines reflect the meaning of the phrase and also the anger that is present within it. However there as still smaller lines so that the was not too bold meaning that it lost all fluidity. 

After the group critical analysis, it became clear that although the character intended to show the aggression present within the phase ‘What the hell’ it still was too elegant and precise for this anger to be portrayed. This therefore showed that it needs to be adapted into a more simplistic design that fully represents the personality of the phrase that was chosen. To do this it was decided that the top of the left hand stem of the ‘W’ was not necessary and neither are the horizontal bars for the ‘t’. Another consideration would be to extend the end of the right hand stem on the ‘W’ to make it go past and cross over the left hand stem allowing there to still be a slight resemblance of a ‘t’.

The most successful element of the design created was that all three letterforms were managed to be kept and incorporated into the design. Although this was not necessary it makes it more clear when using the character what it is used for and the phrase that is it attempting to portray. 

The least successful element of the design was that it unfortunately did not portray the personality of the phrase in the way that it was designed to. It is too elegant to get the message across and therefore needs to be improved in some way to allow for the phrase to become more clear within the design. 

To improve the performance of the next project there should be more focus payed researching into the meaning and of the letters. This would give a wider range of knowledge of how to allow the personality to come through and the way in which characters should be designed and developed.