TYPE BATTLE: Week 8 (13 March)
TYPE BATTLE: Week 8 (13 March)
Here’s your chance to stretch your type muscles on a weekly basis. Each game kicks off on Monday with a new challenge, and closes at midnight PST on Friday. Anyone may submit a design response to the challenge. You may enter as often as you wish. Post anytime. Critiques and comments are welcome throughout the game, from participants and spectators alike. Smack talk is encouraged.
Winner take all, no holds barred. May be the best designer win.
Link directly to this thread: http://www.typophile.com/battle08
Requirements:
- Size: 600 width x 400 height. 72 dpi
- Color: Black and white only
- Format: Please save your graphics as PNG
- Only respond with the characters posted in the challenge.
// THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE:
Use only black and white, design a word no longer than 8 letters using faux 3d letters. Here’s the catch: all entries must be done by hand.

















14.Mar.2006 12.19am
14.Mar.2006 6.24am
Yes!
14.Mar.2006 8.54am
14.Mar.2006 9.10am
Nick — very cool use of the negative space! I actually had to shrink the image to see the word correctly (in essence, “backing up” from the image). Nifty optical effect.
14.Mar.2006 9.48am
Ohhhhhh now I get it. I was quite confused till Lauren mentioned ’negative space.’
Here’s mine, a little rough and it’s got a kind of wacky perspective but I think I may add more details and ink it when I get time.
14.Mar.2006 12.46pm
Hey everyone! Here’s my first sketch–not too complex.
14.Mar.2006 1.29pm
I liked the idea of an extreme perspective but it didn’t come together like I hoped.
14.Mar.2006 2.32pm
Sleepy script attempt…
14.Mar.2006 2.32pm
I don’t know if old work is kosher or not. Here is a piece I drew (pen and ink) 25 years ago as a logo concept for the “American Society of Landscape Architects” (ASLA). They used it on a publication cover but did not use it as a logo. Oh, well.
ChrisL
14.Mar.2006 3.27pm
Furbag? I wanted something with a cap, an ascender and a descender. Besides... “Helvetica” is 9 letters.
14.Mar.2006 10.51pm
14.Mar.2006 10.58pm
along the lines of 3d type…
http://www.universrevolved.com/
15.Mar.2006 2.12am
(likewise - I wanted something with ascender & descender...)
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Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster’s stopped working.
15.Mar.2006 8.16am
oooh....dtw.... now it’s ON!
:)
15.Mar.2006 8.39am
Not hand drawn but I thought I’d show you this aswell.
15.Mar.2006 10.19am
hey Nick,
is that from that Univers Revolved link?
15.Mar.2006 12.10pm
Sorta cheating, but neverthess…
Did these ages ago at a boring job. Some more on my site.
15.Mar.2006 1.32pm
Kris, that is really nice. How you would you solve the shading with just black and white?
15.Mar.2006 4.27pm
“is that from that Univers Revolved link?”
No, an outlined text treated through a 3D effect plug-in in Illustrator. Before I had seen the Univers Revolved stuff, honest.
15.Mar.2006 4.42pm
no way! that’s crazy. i assume that’s how Ji Lee executed his whole deal…
…maybe that could be a whole new type ID challenge!
do you have to buy the plug-in?
15.Mar.2006 5.14pm
I’m not sure. I did it during a quiet hour while freelancing at a company. I don’t have a copy myself. I try and find out the details.
15.Mar.2006 5.31pm
I’ve had a quick look online. The 3D effects are now built-in to CS.
15.Mar.2006 10.57pm
i am impressed, really creative stuff this time around.
16.Mar.2006 4.16pm
First time posting:
When writing my daughter’s name the crowd of descenders sometimes get in a tangle...
16.Mar.2006 4.22pm
Good grief - is that what a .png looks like?
It was nicer as a jpeg!
16.Mar.2006 4.41pm
Gorgeous!
16.Mar.2006 4.42pm
Kellie, GIFs work the best for black and white only.
16.Mar.2006 6.52pm
How would I solve the shading?
Like this, if I had more time!
—K
16.Mar.2006 9.43pm
Does black & white only include grays, also?
16.Mar.2006 10.25pm
Wow Kellie...
Impressive! i wonder what would happen if a few of us collaborated on a single piece of work?
Mike
17.Mar.2006 1.31am
Mmm! That’s a nice one, Kellie (BTW, the png looks just as good as the jpg to me using Firefox... I bet you were looking at it with MSIE weren’t you?)
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Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster’s stopped working.
17.Mar.2006 1.36am
Thanks for the kind comments - I’m using what I think is the latest version of Safari and the png looks HORRIBLE!
17.Mar.2006 2.02am
I switched to Internet Explorer and it looked horrible there, too. Must be some optional setting (?) as a lot of the other pngs looked OK in both browsers (including mine, I’m relieved to find!)
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Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster’s stopped working.
17.Mar.2006 6.19am
The Peggy lettering is awesome! It’s really beautiful!
17.Mar.2006 7.32am
Here’s something I found in my sketch files:
It’s a detail of a doodle I did during a meeting in about 1981. I realize there are way too many letters in there, but I cropped out a bunch of others. The cropped area shown above is about 2.5 inches tall in the original.
17.Mar.2006 7.36am
BTW, I love the Peggy drawing. The drawings this week have been really good. Well done, everyone. Kris, you could maybe get work from Tim Burton.
17.Mar.2006 7.58am
Kris, you could maybe get work from Tim Burton.
i love yer style, kris. it reminds me of lettering illustrations from Roald Dahl’s books...so i can make the Tim Burton connection as well. >^D
17.Mar.2006 9.39am
I dunno what to say, but all of the works are pretty good.
I agree with you paul, I also like Ti Buron’s lettering
17.Mar.2006 11.35am
17.Mar.2006 12.23pm
I think Nick and Glen’s are the cleverest. The more I look at Glen’s ’Twisted’ the more it grows on me. It looks like it would taste good too!
17.Mar.2006 1.29pm
these are looking nifty :P this week gets a quick sketch from me as well. tried to put some optical illusioneske style to it (says “oh my!!”)
17.Mar.2006 6.23pm
Somebody had to do it:
by the way Mark, Kellie, Cerulean: sweeet. I knew there was a reason to like handmade type, in spite of Urban Outfitters.
18.Mar.2006 7.50am
OK, we’ve had quite a variety of ways of rendering the 3d effect, so just by way of an experiment...
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Ever since I chose to block pop-ups, my toaster’s stopped working.
18.Mar.2006 8.55am
^
that’s pretty freekin sweet!
20.Mar.2006 3.55am
Just a quicky, I should be working......’Peggy’ is lovely btw, killing it with the letters :) ’Extruse’ has pretty elements to it as well. I think I choose SKY because it’s grey and moody in East London.
20.Mar.2006 7.37am
Ahh - just found this, coupla weeks old - outline for a graff piece saying MEK. My first real look at 3D letters that used their depth as an element of the letters rather than just a shadow. I started the experiment by cutting out 2d letters, and manipulating them and sketching the results...which incidently looked horrible. Once you get the x,y,z thing in your head though it becomes easier to draw abstract stuff. Sorry for the ramble, and the dirt over the skecth, it’s paint.
21.Mar.2006 3.42pm
mesa wins