Digital Typography

    My teacher adores Jessica Hische's lettering designs. Yesterday I was told to design my own letters and words and to choose a book title to revamp. I chose to re-design Laini Taylor's "Daughter of Smoke and Bone" book title. 

    The book is a fantasy novel by author Laini Taylor. The narrative follows seventeen-year-old Karou through a fantastical war between angels and monsters. It is a modern, urban fantasy spanning human cultures and monster worlds. Karou, the protagonist, perfectly balances both her roles in life; one as a normal art student and the other as an errand runner for a strange creature who she sees as her father. Her family is made up of chimera monsters and they have been with her since birth. Karou begins questioning her existence and being when she meets the fierce, serious and beautiful angel, Akiva.

My original lettering design

    I made the letters and words of the book’s title more interesting. I researched glitchy font styles and was inspired to try and recreate my own version of glitchy font. The word daughter is in my all-original designed font. The colors cyan and bright magenta around the white letters are feminine yet visually exciting because they have breaks in the letters. Broken pieces seem to hover around them as well which makes the word appear as if it’s glitching. I wanted the word daughter to have a glitchy effect because Karou, in the book, is the daughter of Brimstone, a chimera and her birth in the human world is kind of a glitch. An unexpected gesture of mercy but also an act that made some beings in the chimera world angry. The word smoke was made in photoshop. I liquified and added a smoke texture to the letters. I also distorted and skewed the letters, transforming them to my desired shape. I was inspired by smoke. Smoke is fluid and very wispy. The word bones were easy to create. I chose a bold, thick font and added white lines that I sometimes attached little white balls to the ends to make them bone like.