4.A New Component, First Pass

Well, this isn’t really a new component as such. As laid out in my project plan, this week’s posting is instead an extension and revision of last week’s Prototype posting. In last week’s Prototype posting I posted all of Jetsonville’s uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and some punctuation and other special characters.

For Week 4, I have added a bunch more special characters. I revised the lowercase “y”, and lowered the en bullet, based on feedback I received during Tuesday’s meeting. (Thank you!) I also printed out what I had, looked it over, and did some fine-tuning. The adjustments are subtle but, I think, worthwhile. You’ll be able to see the adjustment process and outcome if you scroll down a bit. But first, here is the current state of the Jetsonville font:

Jetsonville progress, Week 4

The above shows the font after many hours of proofing, analysis, adjustment, and fine-tuning. Here is how the characters looked at this start of this process:

Jetsonville version 0016 before adjustments

Here is a scan of the above with my marking showing what adjustments I thought needed to be made:

Jetsonville version 0016 with adjustments marked

And here is basically the same jumble of characters after adjustment:

Jetsonville version 0017 after adjustments have been made

Looking at the above, I think the adjustments I made definitely improved the font. I still see some things I’d like to fix, however. And I still need to create accents and accented characters, perhaps a few other special characters, and perhaps ligatures for ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl. And, of course, the JetBats special characters if there’s time.

Feedback request: How does anyone think the font is looking? What do you think works and what do you think could be improved?

I have also been thinking about the type specimen images that are due in Week 7 and the motion graphic that is due in Week 8. I played around this week with an idea for a type specimen using my keywords. I made what I thought was a nice hand-sketched start:

Jetsonville Wk 4 specimen sketch

Then I tried creating this type specimen in InDesign. Below is my fifth revision, which I am still not happy with:

Jetsonville Wk 4 type specimen, fifth revision

For one thing, the color palette isn’t working. At all. More work is needed in future weeks.

I also did some thinking about the motion graphic that I will create to show off the font. I came up with a script of sorts. The background will be the theme music to “The Jetsons” television show. Letters and characters will be zooming and dancing all over the screen, while a 1960s-type television announcer voice intones the following script. From the script, you can imagine what the visuals will be:

“Now, direct from the future to you—

“Jetsonville! The space-age font with the retro forward look!

“Jetsonville includes 26 sparkling uppercase characters . . .

“26 dazzling lowercase characters . . .

“10 shiny digits . . .

“A plethora of punctuation . . .

“And many other special characters!

“Use Jetsonville for that fun, space-age look!

“Use Jetsonville for communications in English, French, Spanish, German, and most other Latin-alphabet languages!

. . . and the sign-off:

“Jetsonville. Better living through typography.”

So that’s what I’ve been doing this week.

Another feedback request: Any suggestions on how to get the type specimen to work better? And does the script for the video seem like it will work? Thanks for any feedback anyone can offer.