Advanced Typography | Task 3: Type Exploration and Application
- Date: 18/11/2025 - 16/12/2025 (Week 9 - Week 13)
- Deadline: 16/11/2025 (Week 13)
- Aishath Eshal Shihab, 0381863
- Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media - Taylor's University
- Task 3: Type Exploration and Application
Table of Contents
Lectures
No lectures were done during this task.
Instructions
Module Information Booklet
With the knowledge and experience gained in the exercises and tasks, with the accumulated knowledge from the lectures and your own reading (library books and online sources), with the experience gained in the different software covered in the programme thus far, synthesise and apply the learning in the tasks to be mentioned. Allow the knowledge gained to guide and inform your decisions for the effective execution of your final task.
Create a font that is intended to solve a larger problem or meant to be part of a solution in the area of your interest be it graphic design, animation, new media or entertainment design or any other related area not necessarily reflecting your specialisation. End result: a complete generated font (.ttf) with applications.
or
Explore the use of an existing letterform in an area of interest, understand its existing relationship, identify areas that could be improved upon, explore possible solutions or combinations that may add value to the existing letterform / lettering. End result: a complete generated font (.ttf) with applications.
or
Experiment. For your idea to qualify as an experiment it must be novel and unique — working with material that might be 3-dimensional, digitally augmented, edible, unusual, typographic music video or fine art. End result: defined by student. To be effective you will need to study your selected area, look at how type is used in the area and identify potential weaknesses or possible areas of further exploration or experimentation. You can then attempt to provide a creative solution or add value to an existing use.
The end outcome could be a designed font and its application in the form or format that it is intending to provide a solution to, or a designed font that adds value to an existing use, or an experimentative output that results in something novel and unique. The work can manifest into any kind of format related to the issue being solved or explored or experimented: animation, 3d, print, ambient, projection, movie title or game title, music video, use of different material etc.
Process
Ideas
1. Create a font for my friend who is starting a blog with the theme graffiti. This will be a display font, more expressive, and better suited for headings rather than paragraph text.
2. Many cursive fonts have trouble joining the letters together. The letterforms are either too far or too close to the joining line. This idea is to create a working cursive font to use as both display and body font.
3. Most websites use MV Boli as the dhivehi font and if you don’t download
another font online the only option is this one. Sometimes using another
downloaded font isn’t an option either so this idea is to refine MV Boli to
make it more readable and better to look at.
މިއީ އެމްވީ ބޮލި އެވެ. މި ފޮންޓުން އެއްވެސް އެއްޗެއް ނުކިޔެވެއެވެ.
4. The UI on phones, laptops, smart watches, etc.. do not have the option of using dhivehi as the display language. My third idea is to create a rounded, easy to read, simple dhivehi font that can be used for the UI on such devices.
Digitisation
I decided to go with my third idea, improving the font MV Boli. So I opted on digitising without making sketches of all the letters because I was going to use the existing font as a guide but fix the issues that the font had.
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| Figure 1.1 Thaana Week 9 (22/11/2025) |
I first made the basic characters and the fili, which act as the vowels. After I made the punctuations I remembered that there are more consonant variants and I added that towards the end too. I tried to take a screenshot with guides but each row has its own set of horizontal and vertical guides so with all of them visible its difficult to see anything.
After getting the thaana approved by both Mr. Vinod and my friends who speak dhivehi and read thaana, I proceeded to make an uppercase latin character set to go with the thaana.
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| Figure 1.2 English Uppercase Week 10 (29/11/2025) |
To make this I took the cylidrical shape that I used in the thaana font and u sed that one shape to create all the letters. I feel like this gives a cohesive simple look that allows the focus to be more on the thaana instead. After this I made the numbers.
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| Figure 1.3 Numbers Week 10 (29/11/2025) |
The numbers were also made similarly to the English uppercase letters, with the same shape.
The fontlab process I did in the MacOS Labs on campus so I did not get screengrabs of the process however, I faced little to no complications during the process.
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| Figure 1.4 FontLab Week 12 (12/12/2025) |
The only issue I had was the I could not figure out how to type the text
preview on fontlabs from right to left. I searched it on google and looked for
forums but I don't think its possible. This ended up with having to fix the
kernings of the thaana multiple times and I'm still not very happy with
it.
For the presentations and applications, I went with the shell theme.
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| Figure 1.5 Colour Palette Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
I chose this as a theme and colour palette because in the original font, MV Boli, boli means shell so I named my font Kinaari, after the dhivehi name for the golden apple shell. And my applications were done to showcase that it is a basic simple font that can be used for anything, including texting, sending emails, publishing newspapers and magazines, etc...
Final Output
Download Link for Kinaari
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| Figure 2.3 FontLab Screen Grab Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
Five Font Presentations
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Figure 2.4 Font Presentation 1 Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
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Figure 2.5 Font Presentation 2 Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
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Figure 2.6 Font Presentation 3 Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
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Figure 2.7 Font Presentation 4 Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
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Figure 2.8 Font Presentation 5 Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
Five Font Applications
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Figure 2.10 Font Application 1 Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
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Figure 2.11 Font Application 2 Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
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Figure 2.12 Font Application 3 Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
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Figure 2.13 Font Application 4 Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
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Figure 2.14 Font Application 5 Week 13 (15/12/2025) |
Feedback
Week 9
General Feedback: -
Specific Feedback: The cursive letter
font idea could be too complex at my level so I should avoid it if I don't
really want to do it. Look into monospaced fonts for the thaana UI idea.
Watch the Youtube video on how to add thaana to fontlab along with the latin
letters. Add uppercase latin letters to the improved MV Boli font and
numbers if I have.
Week 10
General Feedback: -
Specific Feedback: Complete the
complimentary latin alphabet for next week. Check with Maldivian friends to
see if the thaana font is good and meets the goals of my task.
Week 11
General Feedback: Start exporting the font in fontlab 7, use comp lab
D7.04 if it does not work on your laptop.
Specific Feedback: Watch the youtube video on how to add thaana glyphs in font lab.
Week 12
General Feedback: Five font presentations and five font
applications.
Specific Feedback: Missed online class.
Reflections
Experience
This task was definitely a challenging experience especially since I chose to do it using thaana. I had the most trouble figuring out the kerning for the letters and the fili, which is like arabic letter harakats. However, I'm glad I took the opportunity to explore more about the type of my mother tongue as it has led me to see the many short comings we have in type exploration for thaana and how we could do better.
Observations
Thaana is very different from the English alphabet. While handwritten english and printed english have become pretty similar, handwritten thaana and printed thaana are very different. I noticed this because i focused a lot on the way I wrote in thaana while i was creating the characters and figuring out the kerning. After, I studied other thaana fonts that I felt typed better I realised that it followed different principles to the way thaana is written.
Findings
After I put the font into font lab I realized that kerning would have been easier if I had made a Monospaced font. That was one of my first ideas but because I was thinking of the way thaana is written on paper, I felt that it would not do justice to the letters to have all the letters be the same height, this is because many of the letters are recognizable by the length of their tails.
Further Reading
The book I chose to read for this task is called I.D.E.A.S. Computer Typography Basics by David Creamer. In this book, I read the chapter on character and word spacing.
Kerning:
Kerning is the spacing in-between characters. The purpose is to make the text more pleasing to look at. Certain letter combinations may need manual kerning adjustments including most lowercase letters, and uppercase letters: F, I, K, L, O, P, Q, T, V, W, X, and Y. Kerning is also required when using all uppercase letter combinations such as VA and WA.
Tracking:
Tracking is when you adjust the spacing in-between words. Its purpose is to make type, fit a required space without changing the type size or line spacing.Tracking can be negative, bring the words closer together, or positive, taking the words further apart. An important use of tracking is to fix orphans and danglers.
Word & Letter Spacing for Justified Type:
Justification affects the word, letter, and character spacing automatically. This allows for minimum, optimum, and maximum percentages that the program uses.
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