G A P U R A T Y P E F A C E
is a work of mine for typeface design class during my fourth year in uni. The task was to observe any vernacular typography that can be found around Bandung city, and create a set of letters based on the chosen vernacular style.
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O R I G I N
This vernacular typography was found in Plesiran, Bandung. It’s written on a
gate (Indonesian called it “Gapura”). This gate is usually located on streets
or on the beginning of an alley.
A N A L Y S I S
From the previous gapura, the word “Dirgahayu RI ke 74” is written, which means “Indonesia’s 74th Independence Day”. Therefore, from my analysis, the shape of the typeface has this curvy and sleek characteristic that resembles the shape of flag, which is one of many objects that usually symbolize the word “Independence”.
In my opinion, this typeface tries to carry the spirit that reflects the meaning of Independence Day. The pointy character on the edge of each alphabets also reflects the characteristic of Gapura’s roof, where they usually have that pointy edges.
E A R L Y S K E T C H E S
The early sketch were made without any grid or baseline, it was all free-hand drawn. This sketch were meant to explore the characteristic of the vernacular typeface.
After doing some analysis, it was determined that these characters doesn’t really have a clear system, which means each alphabet character has a different system. Therefore, I decided to choose a few of the characteristics that were collected from the early sketch, and applied it to the final alphabets.
The chosen characteristics are: ponty edges, narrow, thick weight, and wide ends.
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