So, here's a font with a backstory. (The story might be more interesting than the font.)
The local university did a study on my apartment complex (a "new town" which everyone calls "MJ") in Japan. The neighbourhood has lots of issues with poverty and violence but mainly the social fabric is just crumbling and the place is dying. This was summed up for them by some graffiti they found in one of the tower blocks:
![]( "Image: http://cd8ba0b44a15c10065fd-24461f391e20b7336331d5789078af53.r23.cf1.rackcdn.com/typeboard.vanillaforums.com/editor/1l/txgzomaxbp8h.jpg")
("My Town good bye!!")
To try to improve some of the social fabric issues, the university opened a community center, which they called "KBU [the name of the university] My Town MJ":
![]( "Image: http://cd8ba0b44a15c10065fd-24461f391e20b7336331d5789078af53.r23.cf1.rackcdn.com/typeboard.vanillaforums.com/editor/dy/gdmar5h78p78.jpg")
I've been involved in running the center, and have been trying to develop the lettering into a typeface we can use for events, publicity and so on. There's a lot of given letters in the graffiti and the community center sign (which don't always harmonize with each other - that /B is more contrasty than the grafitti was), and I've tried to fill in the rest, but I've found it very difficult to get an authentic look for a graffiti-like font. I'm currently using a few final/initial features, but should I be using more contextual substitutions? Random cycling contextuals? Lots of ligatures?
Here's the best I could come up with:
![]( "Image: http://cd8ba0b44a15c10065fd-24461f391e20b7336331d5789078af53.r23.cf1.rackcdn.com/typeboard.vanillaforums.com/editor/30/41bwckb5idpc.png")
(and there's more in the PDF.) I plan to add kana when I have got the Latin looking reasonable, but if anyone has any tips for doing this kind of font construction I would appreciate it.
The local university did a study on my apartment complex (a "new town" which everyone calls "MJ") in Japan. The neighbourhood has lots of issues with poverty and violence but mainly the social fabric is just crumbling and the place is dying. This was summed up for them by some graffiti they found in one of the tower blocks:
("My Town good bye!!")To try to improve some of the social fabric issues, the university opened a community center, which they called "KBU [the name of the university] My Town MJ":
I've been involved in running the center, and have been trying to develop the lettering into a typeface we can use for events, publicity and so on. There's a lot of given letters in the graffiti and the community center sign (which don't always harmonize with each other - that /B is more contrasty than the grafitti was), and I've tried to fill in the rest, but I've found it very difficult to get an authentic look for a graffiti-like font. I'm currently using a few final/initial features, but should I be using more contextual substitutions? Random cycling contextuals? Lots of ligatures?
Here's the best I could come up with:
(and there's more in the PDF.) I plan to add kana when I have got the Latin looking reasonable, but if anyone has any tips for doing this kind of font construction I would appreciate it.