Punctuation, Ligatures & Emojis

We were tasked to design a new character for a typeface that should be a response to a pre-identified problem. Like most literature shortcuts, our aim was to make communicating easier and quicker. This is why we first started compiling a list of words that we use on a day to day basis, that would benefit us if they were to have simply one character. We came up with: 

hi, hey, bye, dear, to, from, also, or, the, of, brb, sos, i love you (ily), good morning/afternoon/evening, you, me, see you later

After exploring and trying to come up with a variation of characters for a few of these words (see below), we decided upon the words ‘hi’ and ‘to’ as the designs with most potential. These two words are very common and we felt like they could easily be incorporated into our everyday lives, if it were to become a real typeface character.

 

The idea behind our ‘hi’ design was fairly simple. As it is just a two letter word, you could argue that it does not need a ligature or a character design. However, because of how commonly used the word is, we felt that by simply joining the two characters together to form a solid ligature, we could create a very useful character. We also wanted to keep the character recognisable, so it’s meaning would be clear and universal. The end design worked very well and was adaptable to various fonts (See fig.1), however, during our crit the feedback we received was that the idea was “too simple”. Turns out our attempt at creating something straightforward backward to seem as fairly unoriginal and lazy. The feedback we were also given was to not be afraid of losing the letterforms. An example we were given was that we get rid of the ‘i’ in ‘hi’ and by just keeping the tittle, and placing it over the bowl of the ‘h’, we could shorten the efforts of writing but still keep the clarity of the message we were trying to communicate.

The design for ‘to’ was received much better. With this design we followed the same simplicity and clarity intentions we used for ‘hi’. The character utilises the letterforms of ’t’ and ‘o’, and follows the same basic principle of merging the two together. The end result was also adaptable in various fonts (See fig.2). I think this design seems more successful and was received more positively because we explored the possibilities of the letterforms more thoroughly, and shortened the word to it’s maximum extent whilst also keeping to our intentions. The character communicates the word legibly as well as being easy to reproduce. 

Fig. 1

Fig.2