Typophile

Modifying Bellevue for magazine nameplate

martin.mckenna

Hi,

I'm currently working up a nameplate for a student magazine. The magazine features mostly news features and opinion and will be published four times in the academic year. The magazine is reasonably high-brow and serious, but with a student focus. Anyway, for the nameplate/flag/logo/wordmark, I drew on inspiration from the New York Magazine's nameplate.

With some help from the Type ID board here, I settled on Bellevue. There are some really beautiful swashes in Bellevue, but unfortunately the M doesn't have any. So I'd like to butcher some of the swashes from other characters and Frankenstein them onto the M.

In the attached image, from top to bottom: Unaltered, first version, second version. I like that there's more to the second version, but with scaling the swashes up and down I feel the scale and weight of the strokes have suffered. Any help appreciated!

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Cover.png13.56 KB
Aleksander Lenart

I like the 2nd better. What about lowering that swash of the 'M' below the baseline? Or making an alternative 'y'? Or both?

BTW. That M reminds me of the Monocle magazine logo. A good association maybe.

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AL ▪ ▪

dinazina

I agree, lower the M swash (on #2); I notice an illusion that it's "floating" above the baseline, which to me is distracting. Otherwise, beautful shape.

Hrant H Papazian

The second one.
Also, I'd lower the tittle of the "i", and lower the
first "el" or raise the second one (if you have room).

hhp

martin.mckenna

All good ideas; the tittle (had to look that one up!) especially. Will work up a new version tomorrow and post the result. Thanks!

martin.mckenna

Apologies for the delay, have been abroad. Can't attach the revised image due to my university's proxy weirdness, but here's a link to the file anyway: http://www.mckenna.se/v2.png We have since gained a "T.C.D.", referring to the college, on request from the editor. I've also lowered the swash on the M, lowered the tittle, and the first lowercase l.

Grateful for any other pointers!

Hrant H Papazian

Nice... except for that "T.D.C." thing. :-/
Try dumping the dots, and making it a small, bold, wide sans font.

hhp

martin.mckenna

Just thought I'd check back in to show you the finished product. Our first issue was published on 28 September and our next will be 16 November. Check us out at www.miscellany.ie and click on 'latest' to view the issue.

Captured from web.archive.org on 14 Oct 2013. view this capture