Tseggai:

I don't really have anything to contribute to your character description of Tupac, but here is a link that Jared Benson posted a while back that you might enjoy

On top of everything, he was a voice, a poet and a philosopher. So maybe a typeface that reflects his ability to express his views while balanced with some regularity to reflect his rhyme and reason. If that made any sense, what I mean is, utilizing some wild graffiti tag elements here and there (overcoming adversity), but held intact firmly by some charachteristics of a classic typeface? A bit of challenge I'm sure, anyway, I thought some input from a fan might be helpful.

Nice link Scott

When you try to put too much "character" into something essentially utilitarian like a font, you run the strong risk of coming out with a caricature. Try instead for subtlety, of a hint of Tupac.

hhp

Glamour, wealth and beauty in the presence of death, etc... (see 'memento mori') is a theme represented in hip hop as well as in baroque. so why don't you look at baroque fonts like Adobe's Caslon...

"I am a design student. We are expected to design a typeface based someone with social influence."

Ya know, this is one of those cases where you should just design a typeface you like, then just use a pinch of 'designer speak' to justify it at the end.

Check out Emigre's Priori for what I believe is a nice blending of character and utility.

Granted, it has many variations within it, but that may just be the point.

I assume that novelty/titling fonts are probably the aim here, rather than a true text face.

Cool website, Scott.

Hi everyone, it seems like i have a lot to write about for not responding ontime.Thanks everyone for your input.

Scott, thanks for the cool link. Actually, there is a small book which consists word illustrations:
http://wordsatplay.com/

Raja, I like the idea of having a mixture of a classic typface and wild graffiti characters. Would be interesting to see the expected and unxpected qualities of them, it is kind of like hinting one thing over another like Hrant says. I'm his big fan too, thus why I am taking the risk of showing it off to conservative designers, while many are doing traditionl ones.

Thomas, "Glamour, wealth and beauty in the presence of death" nice keywords. I'll look into them.

Chris, Emigre's Priori has some features that relate to tupac as well. I like how the letter "t" looks like a cross that tupac has on his back and he refers/hints it/God in a lot of his poems. That's a cool tip.

This class goes a little slow at the begining as we have to research a lot. But, I'll make sure to update u with the approaches, progress, and results.

Thanks U all!!
Tseggai