Project 2: Designing a Typeface and Type Book Part 1: Photographing a Material Typeface (To be completed in Week 2) 1) Assemble and photograph each capital letter, one at a time, and make sure you construct each letterform at the same size. 2) Using pencil, lightly mark the x-height on your paper so that you place the crossbars of your letterforms at the same consistent height. 3) Make sure that your paper and your camera lens are both in a vertical orientation.

4) Shoot in bright indirect light and make sure there are no shadows on your letters. 5) When shooting, keep your camera lens parallel to the picture plane of your paper and maintain the same shooting distance between your camera and the paper for each letter. Each letter should fill the viewfinder of your camera without cropping off the edges of the letter.

6) Photograph all 26 letters. Use your LCD screen to review each image zoomed in to confirm that you did not take a blurry shot. Reshoot a letter if needed.

Part 2: Building a Digital Typeface in Adobe Photoshop (Begin in Week 2) 1) Open your letters in Photoshop and copy and paste each letter into your alphabet template. Make sure to name your layers the name of your letter. 2) Place each letter in the exact same layout as seen below, and keep the designated empty squares empty. The empty squares will be used to bind your pages together.

3) To resize your letters, select the layer of your letter. Then go to Edit> Transform> Scale from the top menu. Hold down the SHIFT key when you resize so that your letters stay in proportion. 4) Once all 26 letters are arranged, you can merge your letters onto one layer by selecting the top layer and selecting Layers> Merge Layer from the top menu. Repeat this until you only have one layer for your letters. IMPORTANT: Only merge the letter layers; preserve all other layers. 5) Remove the white background from your letters by using the Magic Wand Tool in the Tools Pallet. In the top menu options, make sure Anti Alias is on, Contiguous is on and Tolerance is around 20. Hold down the SHIFT key to add to your selection. 6) Use the Eraser Tool to erase any left over marks that don’t belong in the white space. 7) Give your typeface a name that informs your choice of materials. Use Edit> Copy and Edit> Paste to duplicate your letters and spell out the name of your Typeface. Then add “by Your Name” underneath. 8) Save your document from the top menu options File>Save As> Format: Photoshop. Title the document your “firstname_lastname_P2.psd”. Copy your saved file to your USB Drive, save another copy on your New School google drive and (when finished) place a copy into the Class Folder on the Dropbox so that I can print your file.