Illustrative type; digital development of Star Wars typeface.

I scanned the hand rendered typeface in and then I live traced this in illustrator in order to keep this hand rendered style to the typeface as seen below. 

I then started to apply colour, starting with a really dark one and gradually getting lighter but I felt although this looked satisfactory, it made the whole typeface look really flat and quite boring really. I knew this typeface had a lot more potential. It was however, good to see that the design worked with a range of colour and brightness. 

I then took the typeface into photoshop and re-applied the colour so that I could play around with the effects that you are able to apply. I felt a lot happier about some of these results because they were giving more depth to the typeface and actually reminded me of the lightsabres within the film. I spent quite a while changing all the effects and settings within photoshop until I got something I was completely satisfied with. This was a learning curve for me really in the fact I was taking something from illustrator into photoshop instead of just settling for something 'satisfactory' as i've never really applied these effects to my work as such. It was a matter of trial and error. 

These were the exact settings I used to get the last typeface result seen in the examples of the ones above. (For future reference!)

Keeping similar settings to the ones above I played around with this further to see if I could get any more out of this technique and process. I was really pleased with how much using these effects can improve the colour within the typeface and at the same time creating visually interesting textures. 

I applied the colour I wanted to the background layer of the typeface. 

And then used the inner glow option on 'blending options' to create this glow and lightsabre effect typeface and altered the settings (as seen in the screen shot above)

Close up of the typeface to see how this style has worked across each letter

The effect seems to have worked on some letters better more so than others but I think because it's happened to a few and not just one, it's still really effective and makes it more interesting because if it was all the same it might look too uniform. 

Final digital typeface 

I'm really pleased with the result of this typeface because it looks very realistic in terms of looking like a  lightsabre. I chose the blue colour based on a quote I had in mind and the colour of the lightsabre the person has who said the quote. The outline of the typeface is traced from the original that I sourced. I think although the blue and black constrast, they work really well together because you can still see the detail within the space band and this doesn't get washed out by the other colour. I really enjoyed creating this typeface too because I learnt something new within photoshop in terms of the techniques and styles you can apply to things to give them a certain look. I will definitely try and use this skill within other briefs that I take on if it's applicable. 

I then printed out the typeface to see if the colour and effect was still as good on stock. I'm still really happy with this and feel it still communicates really well.