After we came up with our first draft, we presented it to the class to ask for comments and critiques. Many people liked our font because it was very pretty and unique. The font itself was very feminine, which would strongly appeal to the target audience of girls aged 5-9. Although there were many good aspects, there were also multiple concerns.

A major concern throughout the class was that the font did not really represent the steampunk theme that the book was centered around. Of course, this was a significant issue because we wanted the font to fit the theme of the book. Although our font looked very pretty, we needed it to satisfy the criteria of the producers and compliment the drawings. To incorporate this steampunk theme, we did more research on steampunk and specifically the Victorian era as it was inspiration for steampunk. We found that a significant component of the Victorian era were the corsets that women wore and the men with striped pants or coats.

Our initial idea was to incorporate corsets and striped pants into all the letters, but we very quickly found out that it would be very difficult to keep a similar style to our first font and still incorporate these themes into every letter without overwhelming the reader. To adjust to this, we thought of adding these themes to only a couple of the letters. The only problem inconsistent letters was that it just did not look good. The letters that had the corset and ruffles theme appeared to be a completely different font than the ones that did not, so we had to adjust it again to make it one standard font that incorporated the steampunk theme.

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 The first way we tried to change the font was by adding crossed lines that would symbolize the strings of the corset, in order to attempt to keep our initial theme but add a more steampunk accent. This idea did not work because the font became very hectic and objectively did not look good. A second way we tried to adjust it was by curving the edges of the lines to try and symbolize the curve of the corsets. In certain letters, like the D and the B, this shape looks really good, but in other letters like the T and the F it did not look too great. We are still deciding on whether we want to incorporate this into our font or not, or maybe just keep it for a few letters and not use it for others. A third idea we tried was adding dots next to the lines that would represent buttons. We really liked this idea because it kept our initial font that had the common Victorian theme of stripes, but by adding the buttons we made the Victorian theme stand out a little more.

“Steampunk Costumes, Clothing and Fashion.” Vintage Dancer, Restored 316, 2020, vintagedancer.com/steampunk/.

What type of font would match the a punk rock theme storybook?

After speaking with the producer of the book, the horizon for possible typefaces expanded pretty far since the criteria was set to be broad: make a font. Lower case letters or capital? More uniform or artsy? These are all questions that the creator of the storybook had little answers to. Picking a font for a story book is peculiar because unlike other texts, even the font for a picture book should add to its aura and let me say; there a LOT more marked fonts than unmarked ones.

Notice the image above. Each of the fonts seems to send a different message and suggest the reader feels a certain way. In a story book, it is crucial that the reader gets fully immersed into the story and publishers take time to ensure that nothing takes away from the aura of the book. The title especially plays a big role in setting the tone for the story book because it is the first thing the reader reads when picking up the book.

We decided that there were two main aspects to consider when creating the font. The first aspect was that it had to match the creative punk rock theme and as mentioned above, “immerse” the reader in the story. On the other hand, we thought it was important that not only the title not take away from the artwork in the background, but be readable for a younger audience. Artsy, but simple: this was the look we were going for.

Inspiration

Due to our lack of experience, it was hard to immediately come up with an idea that worked, so we searched what any clueless student would do: “cool fonts”. Of course, the results were overwhelming and the search did little to specify the direction we were going in, until we found an already created font that seemed to serve our purpose.

We felt like the font above had many positive features that fit the theme of the storybook well. First of all, it was easy to read. The base letter, behind the fancy lines, was a basic capital or lowercase letter than any kid who can read, could read. We liked how the decorative lines did not add any confusion and thought that they would flow nicely into the background of the storybook cover. Still, there were some parts we did not like, such as the design of the some of the letters and the confusing mix between capital and lowercase letters. Regardless, we thought this already created font would be a good starting point for some inspiration as it is pretty basic and can be molded for most situations.

Here it is. A VERY ROUGH draft of a font that could eventually turn into something that can be used as the title for a story book, but well see. You never know what “cool font” we might stumble on next.