OUGD403 Studio Brief 2 - Typeface Design Experimentation

Initial Experimentation -

Firstly I looked into the different typefaces we had to choose from. I put all the fonts into Bold to reflect my manifesto and the idea of being strong, I think Bold works the best. 

I chose 4 of the typefaces to experiment with as I thought they looked like the strongest designs. 
When searching for a way to start designing my typeface one of the suggestions was to start with the letterforms above adhecions. This was because they apparently serve for the most of the other letterforms to get a general idea of how you typeface will look.

Helvetica - 

I didn't want to go down the obvious route of choosing Helvetica but thought it would be best to try it. I was thinking about buildings and architecture when creating the initial designs. 
If you think of a building it doesn't have a rounded base to stand strong it's flat so I decided to take this through in my designs. 
Taking this further buildings don't sport a gaping hole in the middle of them to stay up so I decided to take these out also which made for quite an interesting design.

Garamond - 

Originally I was going to take this typeface and go down the more traditional route. I was going to make into into almost a Slab-Serif design but I decided against it and instead just made some of the serifs harsher.
Once finishing on the top design I realise I had only been working in lowercase lettering which, to me made no sense when working to design for the adjective Strong.
I quickly changed this and worked in uppercase cutting out parts of the letterform which, I know earlier I stated looking at buildings great gaping holes in them would not work to keep them standing.

Berthold -

When conducting a Google image search I came across some lettering that reminded me of a sort of strong man Gym.
After a group critique I was shown that the design also resembles something similar to the stencil type the army uses. This gave me the idea to make the type reflect that style more and maybe even take it through to stencilling and putting the design into practice.
I took the same stroke line through each letter changing the placement as I went through until I found the right place for it. Some of the letterforms I had to change to help with the design like the A, the C and the S. Giving the counter in the A another side to the top, the C and the S I moved the ends of the forms to square it off almost like Helvetica.