Yuseon Park
SCORE plane, vertical, under
Source material:
American Underscored (Remington Typewriter) | 1923,
Corona PicaNR | 1937,
IBM Secretarial (Executive Typewriter) | 1968
Spring semester 2022
The Latin alphabet is designed for horizontal writing, and rarely, capital letters are stacked vertically on signage. Rather than “stacking” the Latin alphabet vertically, I planned the letters in a form that could be “written” vertically. In a multi-lingual type world, I expect the change of way of reading to be extended to the shift of thinking, and I decided to experiment with the possibility of form through the way of reading.
Nina and David Jonathan Ross, who made the typeface Bungee, shared that it was quite difficult technically to make the vertical typesetting work as a native feature so that typing the font would automatically go vertically. There is a way in font production to “force” the font to set vertically, and it doesn’t work 100% because it’s not the expected behavior for Latin. Therefore, on Nina and David’s advice, I designed the font meant for vertical typesetting “sideways” (like I drew it in my sketch). In font editor, the letters would all be sideways, and then for using it would have to rotate the text box.
Nina and I were looking for a type as a resource that shares the same design in horizontal and vertical versions of the font and which is not monospaced (all glyphs share the same width) but ensures legibility. Nina and I checked typewriter specimens to find more material for that “Fine Line” typewriter face, the starting point. And typewriter did not require the letters to all be monospaced; it had few different widths that letters could take up, so many letters would still be grouped in the same width, which should be helpful for vertical settings.
The round terminal of the original typeface was sharpened to provide a modern aesthetic so that it would not be affected by the shape of the rotation by 90 degrees. The last underscored version added is also a visual representation of the underlined device to obstruct the read direction. Until the shape of the typeface is determined at the initial stage, I just drew it typically. Then, I used a script to rotate glyphs by 90 degrees and tried to figure out a process for automating the sideways rotation. And at some moment, I modified the shape of each version separately.
And one more thing to consider in the development process was the question of the vertical writing program. The East Asian-Adobe program provides automatic vertical writing, offering an automatic reading from right to left.
Therefore I’m considering creating web pages for testing vertical writing and reading directions. The score typeface will be continuously modified, and I will document the various criteria and technologies considered in the process to provide clues. The website will be shared here!
These student typeface designs created at Yale School of Art are noncommercial academic projects, commonly revivals or reinterpretations of historical typefaces. Read more about this typeface design course at Yale School of Art.
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