Blk 539 : translating spatial experience and characteristics of Singapore's HDB flat to typography design.

• Main Author: Lee, Angeline Zhi Ting.
• Other Authors: School of Art, Design and Media
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Architecture; DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Print media
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/44456
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Blk 539 is a typeface design project that explores the relationship between local architecture and typography. It attempts to discover new possibilities of expanding Singapore’s visual vocabulary through type design. Major institutions in Singapore have regularly commissioned typefaces from foreign designers. This situation evoked my curiosity to how typefaces would be interpreted and designed from a local’s perspective. Case studies and research had been done to understand type design and its relation with identity and architecture, their purpose, approaches and outcomes. A larger portion of my research is directed to constructing a characteristic for the typeface. I approach the design problem by understanding the relationship between cultural identity and architecture. This is to allow me to identify a building that can be inspirational for the typeface. Subsequently, I chose to study on public residential buildings based on the statistics of the majority of people living in HDB flats, the relativity between people and the building, and my survey result on the type of building that best represent Singapore’s cultural identity. From the abundant of research on HDB, I streamlined my study to a specific 1980s HDB that I live in. Observational studies were done to understand culture, architectural expression, human movement and spatial construction of the building. I developed my concept by bridging typography to observational studies on human movement and spatial construction of the building. The design process involves doing prototypes to visualize how numerals could take the form of directions to different levels of the building; experimentation on different perspective of the numerals to create different representations of letters; solving problems on unification and legibility; creating a grid system; translating three dimensional glyphs to two dimensional form; digitizing and refining the typeface, making 3D models for the typeface; and developing ideas for the installation space. The findings and design process are necessary to discover creative solutions for a typeface that could visually suggest a different point of view of Singapore’s architecture.