An original typeface designed by Bessie Love

Introduction

The Process

Problems with Majuscules

Resolution

Majuscles Specimen

Mincules Specimen

Numerals and Puntication

The Name

Test Drive

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

Creating a typeface has always been a dream of mine. This dream cameto mind as a child, and since then I’ve wanted to create a typeface related to children.

After a Sunday in the church nursery watching the children play with their toys, which were geometric shapes, I began to see letter forms. From that moment, the idea grew into a typeface that would become the signage for a children’s math and science museum.

I spent some time researching children’s museums, and found one that my idea could support. From there I decided to make my typeface for the exculsive use of the Children’s Museum of the Upstate.

Looking to other great typefaces for inspiration and a starting point, Futura was the first to stand out. The perfect circle characters were something I wanted to follow after to give the typeface a mathematical feel. My next approach was to add a scientific twist to the characters. The useage of angles in Kabel was the perfect solution.

After deciding what to create my typeface for and what to bade it off of, I started with the 3 basic geometric shapes, and built letters confined to a perfect square containing at least one if not all 3 basic shapes.

The minicules height and width is excatly three fourths of the majucules. This helps create a typeface that was very easy toread on the museum’s signs.

With each typeface created there is at least one problem letter. In the creation ofMolecule the issue came fast with the creation of majuscule B. There were numerous possibilities, but none seemed resolved.

Attempt 1:It seemed the easiest solution would be to take the concept of circles and put them directly on top of each other. The issue was the crossbar width.

Attempt 2:The next solution seemed to come from the miniscule B by adding a circle to the top. This created an awkward negitave space in the top bowl.

Attempt 3:After a few fails I started looking to other letters for inspiration. After looking at the H and E the idea of a flatcrossbar appeared. The angles created where the crossbar began caused a negative space that did not fit with the rest of the face.

Hours upon hours of looking at the screen and seeing nothing but a dead end is how the resolution was born. I looked at all the failed characters to see what was working and what wasn’t. I found that the crossbar of attempt three worked well with the counters of attepmt one. So the two merged into the beautiful B.

When the designing was complete the next major aspect was to name the typeface. I started looking for names in my inspiration, and my thoughts drifted to Emerson. This was the name of the child playing with the blocks that started this idea.

I felt Emerson didn’t fit the face. I was looking for something that said math and/or science. I began researching math and science terms. That is were I found molecule. The term molecule stands for small particles that make up all living and non-living spects of life.

This is excalty what I was looking for. The typeface alone says math since it was created from the basic geometric shapes. And typeography is the basis of graphic design as a molecule is the basis of science, so the two were a perfect match.