Drawing an alphabet – ‘D’

Initial idea: something fancy.

I’ve probably nicked this from somewhere. The Victorians loved over-the-top decorative type. This is my idea of Victorian ‘display’¹ style, throwing in a few typical features such as the curls, central ‘spikes’ and white ‘inlines’.

It’s easier when you know where you’re going

I had an idea of what I was doing with this so there wasn’t much exploratory work (i.e. messing about). I already had the points in the middle of the uprights, the curls, the inline white bits and the dots in mind. The rest followed on from those features. Most of my effort was spent trying to get the curves right, which was also the case in many of the other letters.

The 2nd thing is the hard bit

Symmetrical letters are easier because you only have to draw half but here I think the shape is too regular and it’s slightly distracting. So, I wanted to make the bottom curl different to the top one. Just chopping it might have worked but I felt it needed something else. The problem was that I’d already used my first choice shape. Not only would the second curl have to be a different shape to the first curl but it would also have to complement the first. I didn’t manage to do anything that improved on the original so the symmetry remains.

This is part of a project to draw the letters of the alphabet in different styles.

Bonus feature

Letters into logos

It wasn’t the original intent but the potential was obviously there – I’ve turned some of the letters into logos and branding. I’ve had to invent companies to match the logos, which is not the usual order of things.

I got carried away with this one and drew, as you can see, a full logotype based on the original ‘D’.

1. Used for large titles and headers. You wouldn’t use it for text.