PROJECT TITLE
Welly NZ
SERVICES
Typeface Development
Welly NZ is a typeface inspired by the capital of New Zealand: Wellington. Drawing heavily on Maori artistic tradition of curvilinear design and paying homage to current progressive political leadership, this whimsical display face has a lot of character.
Each letterform is based around curvilinear forms in tribute both to Maori traditions and the wind that rips through the city. Ascenders and descenders can be found throughout the alphabet as a visual representation of the varying origins that come together to make up this unique city. Slab serifs provide the grounded steadiness needed in the windiest city in the world while also paying homage to the modern and progressive leadership Wellington exemplifies. The result is Welly NZ, a typeface that is playful, flowing, and beautifully unexpected.
Typeface influences include Didot and Bodoni
Development
Each letter was initially rendered by hand, going through a process of creating and putting together the rules that unify this type. Once I isolated the main curvilinear form for verticals and curves, it became a process of flipping and re-tracing to discover how the constant shapes came together in unique ways to create each letter form. Every letter is related to the rest. Once I had the entire alphabet hand rendered, I digitized them using Illustrator and then turned each character into glyphs where I made final tweaks and adjusted the kerning
