Logotype - Given Word

To start off this project we were given a random word that would form the basis of our chosen company. My word was 'diffidence', meaning modesty or shyness from the lack of self-confidence of a person. Diffidence can also be explained as distrust, as the word originates from the latin word 'diffidere' which has the same meaning.


c.1400, from Latin diffidentia "mistrust, distrust, want of confidence," fromdiffidere "to mistrust, lack confidence," from dis- "away" (see dis- ) + fidere "to trust" (see faith ). Modern sense is of "distrusting oneself"(1650s). The original sense was the opposite of confidence. Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper

To put diffidence into context the word can be used like this:
'Although James wanted to express his opinions, he still spoke with diffidence.'

After finding out the meaning of the word, the first initial ideas that came to my mind were companies that help people to deal with their emotions. In this case, shyness and self doubt are the key words to use when choosing my company.

One key thing that will be essential to this project is considering the typeface that will be used, and to help us choose an appropriate typeface we have our options narrowed down to: Helvetica, Futura, Times Roman, Century Expanded, Garamond and Bodoni. These six typefaces are what typographer Massimo Vignelli believes to be the best and the only appropriate typefaces to use in any situation.

Punctuation, Ligatures and Emojis

For this assignment we were tasked with creating a new character using a typeface of our choice. Through development of ideas and experimentation, our aim was to create a new ligature that will work both as a written character and as a key on a keyboard. To start this project, we looked at the origin of the Ampersand or the '&' sign and how this character has had so many variations through history.

My initial starting point for this project was to search for the most popular abbreviations used in popular culture. Some of these abbreviations includes TBH, BTW, LOL, OMG, BFF, AFK and BAE etc. From this, I began creating several quick sketches of these abbreviations in different variations until they look like they could be used as a ligature.
Here is an example of how I came up with several variations of the abbreviation 'ASAP', and from them I chose ones that I thought would work the best as a ligature.

However, as we were tasked with creating our ligatures in groups, we instead decided to use the abbreviation 'TBH' (to be honest). In the same way as before we devised several potential ideas as initial sketches that could be used as our final ligature. Here are our final mock up designs of the ligature, which we believe simplify the abbreviation while still making it noticeable to the original letters. After receiving feedback from our peers we found that the ligature would work successfully both in written form and as a key on a keyboard, but it could have been simplified further by taking away the ascender on the left and the T shape at the end of the the right.
As shown in red I have created a response to the feedback and suggestions given at the group critique. Having simplified the ligature further I feel this shape works even better as it would be quick and easy to draw by hand.