Ligatures, Glyphs and Emojis

For this brief, we were given the task of collaborating in a group to create a ligature type based around a chosen word or phrase, this ligature would then be created using one of the six typefaces created by “Massimo Vignelli”, author of “The Vigenlli Canon,” where each of the six typefaces are referenced.

Me and my group began to try and choose a word we could represent in ligature form. After much debate, we decided upon the acronym “LOL” because of its potential for ligature from and the popularity of the acronym itself. We decided to use ‘Helvetica’ as our chosen typeface, as Helvetica is a no nonsense, simple sans-serif. “LOL” is commonly used by younger people and the correlation between young people and social media platforms mean if the acronym was every used, chances are it would be on a digital, social media platform, most of which use sans-serif fonts, another reason we decided to go with Helvetica.

We used initial rough sketches, ideas and cut ups of Helvetica typeface arranged in certain ways to create our ligature form.

Our final Ligature from looked like this. We thought this best represented the word we used, without being too close to the word or too literal. We went with the idea the multiple rings surrounding the inner shape portrayed sound spreading. When looking at the words “laugh, out, loud,” we thought this would be a good representation without looking too literal.