Digital Font Design
Digital font design may at first seem to be quite a different skill to hand-carving lettering in stone but there is actually a basic, fundamental root that both these disciplines have in common, and that is understanding letterforms and having a passion for drawing lettering.
I really enjoy the process of sketching, drawing and redrawing letterforms. I have also converted hand-drawn letterforms into a digital format, creating vector outlines and working with them on-screen, enabling me to create my own fonts.
FONT DESIGN
Digital work is a part of my design repertoire and it enables me to create true-type fonts that can be used for my general design work and initial sketches as well as in conjunction with manufacturing processes such as sandblasting in glass, and CNC routing to make MDF patterns for casting work for example.
These are examples of my fonts, some of which I am still working on. It is a long process creating a font that ‘works’ and building in the correct character spacing. I am continually improving these, fine tuning shapes and spacing.
Working with my fonts in other materials
Below are a few examples of digital design projects created using my fonts as a starting point. Once a vector design is created, it can be used in different materials and at different sizes too, as can be seen in the first four images. The other examples below are a mixture of CNC laser cutting, Zinc and stainless steel etching, sandblasting and graphic design.
Other digital DESIGN projects in stone
Below are a few examples of how designs can be developed in stone from a digital starting point. The first three images have elements of CNC work made fusing vector artwork that I produced, the fourth shows the design stage for the following four hand carved pieces, the subsequent images show how sandblasting can be used in a design, sometimes a combination of sandblasting and hand carved elements work well together. The lettering on the final eight pieces is mainly sandblasted (apart from the larger titling on the war memorials) for a variety of reasons. For example the ‘Matthews’ stone features a favourite ‘stencil’ font of Derricks, and this font has elements that I felt lent themselves well to sandblasting (thick strokes, rounded terminals and serifs). The War memorials on the bottom row both list so many names that it was not viable to hand carve these due to cost, but they still have hand carved elements and masonry and heraldic features. The last two were also sandblasted to keep costs down, and the Buddhist/Sumi brush swirl worked well as a sandblasted element, it would almost seem weird or counter-intuitive to carve this deeply.
