Before I started actually designing the second board I wanted to research the typography of the Kelmscott press, the press of William Morris. This has a dule purpose that mostly centres around the fact the the quote that is the focus of the board is a William Morris quote, and the idea of fraternity in craft is central to the arts and crafts movement wich is strongly associated with the late 1800s.
I visited anumber of sites ranging from the 'victorian Web' and the victoria and albert museum.
I found that in terms of the publication design of the Kelmscott press Morris took inspiration from medieval design and specifically the work of Nicolas Jensen and his press in venice in the 1400s. This lead me on some further research.
I found some samples of the blacklister forms that Jensen created for use in medicine books and the like. The humanist forms of type strove for natural balance that are gentle to the eye rather than assaulting it with sharp forms. Black letter was of course a major inspiration and was the main stay of Kelmscotts' more popular publication, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Illuminated letters were a reccurent theme during this image research. This is something that is possibly worth using but I also think that such a busy dominant shape could really cloud the meaning of the quote. However, because I have already thought about the way that the ornamentation is going to be based on plant shapes, this lends its self to possibly treating the entire quote as an illumination, using the focus words as the source of the plant ornamentation.
There is a distinct irregularity to some of these forms and it seems intentional. There is clearly an attempt at humanity and imperfect perfection in the line weight variation inconsistencies. This lends its self to a slightly more flexible baseline and layout than more angular forms that tend to need to interlock between lines, especially in any body copy setting.
There is a lot of botanical ornamentation around the type. This took me to one of my books that has some information about the arts and crafts movement The Design Source Book.
This allowed me to see how this ornamentation cakes from or is at least related to the patterns that are so central to the arts and crafts aesthetic. There is a tradition of symmetry on the pattern only pieces that is not quite obeyed by the ornamentation around type it seems to be able to be freer and less constrained by perfection. although no less good for it.
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I took some small sections of a few of these images and sketched out sme letterforms. I found a trend of blackletter glyphs that had been softened with te introduction od curves where angles would be in styles such as mexican blackletter.
I attempted doing this my self, taking a lower case 'a' and softening off the corners. However, this didn't seem to work. I think this is because the curves in the Kelmscott type come from the use of wide nibbed calligraphy which maintains a different type f line wieght variation in each stroke of the glyphs.
I then took the Kelmscott type and put it together into the quote in a first layout experiment/sketch. In an attempt to understand the line wieght variation I used my parallel pen to draw out a few of the letters that I was struggling with. This really made the flow of the letters mre appaent and it gave me the reminder that I wante to introduce connected letters or ligatures.
I took the main words from the quote 'equality' and 'fraternity' and looked at how I could make them connect to one another. I found that this made the letters look like they are growing from and into one another. This fits exactly with the idea of socially reaching out to one another. In an attempt to magnify this message I looked at shading in the connective points, in an effort to mimick the darker areas of stem that you get on plants at narrower connective points. This could work because the ornamentation I intend to do for this board is botanical and caligraphic, it not only fits with the message but also the aesthetic. When this is done of the chalkboard I think I want to look at intriducing the natural colours of blue and green to achieve the same shading effect.
Something that I have returned to upon doing this board is the work of chalk artists Danger Dust. As can be seen above they have an incredible mastery of colour and form in the chalk medium. The way they use botanical ornament here is really interestng because the foundations of the pattern are symetrical but the details, such as leaves and flowers create interest and vary, helping to direct the eye towards the words.
I created another draft of the possible layout and I found that the angular forms of the letters need space above and below, because here they sometimes feel a little bit squashed and I think I will need to draft this again I think. I also looked at the way that caligraphic flourishes could segway into leafy laurels. This can be on the right side of the book. I think this works really well because the the flowing nature of the forms themselves and also I can see that this could develop as the stems cross over and then flowers are introduced.
This can be seen on the left page here. This is intended to communicate the positivity of interaction and the fruits of such. I also did yet another layout draft of type layout that I think is the winner, just because of the sense of space and eaase with which the order is legibility. I think next needs to be some chalk board experimentation.
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