Punctuation, Ligatures & Emojis

For this task we had to come up with a new character, by playing around with letter forms we had to create a new symbol for an existing problem in phrases. For example, shortening a phrase like the ampersand '&'.

We were paired up, me and Will chose to use the phrase "What, where, when?".

Here are some initial design ideas in rough sketch form of graph paper:

We eventually came to the conclusion the simplistic approach was the best and landed on this design. I thought this ligature highlighted the questioning aspect well as well as the three w's without overcomplicating the symbol. I then edited it into an iphone text bubble which was successful in the crit, somebody noted it looked exactly suited.

However after speaking to my tutor it was clear this was too obvious and he suggested I experimented more with using the three W's and not worrying so much about holding onto the structure of the letterforms. Had I done this project again I would've realised how free I could be with the experimentation as it seemed many others also were set on holding onto the letterforms structure as that's what we're used to and can more easily identify with.

Making a symbol like this would be incredibly useful over social media and short hand texting, during the crit session on Friday we discussed how this symbol could be inserted onto event pages as well as used as a character over text, shortening three or more words down to one symbol. The rest of the groups really liked the concept but were unsettled on which design was the most effective however it seemed by small majority this one was favourited:

This new design incorporates more of the sense of three separate questions, signified by the three dots, despite the fact there is only one 'W'. There is also no curved neck of the '?' which clashed originally with the straight edged W, the form is therefore more fluid. It also has a more playful personality, better suited to the context as this glyph would primarily be used in response to questions such as "Are you coming out tonight?" or about leisure events such as films, concerts etc.

Had I had more time I would like to have experimented with Serif variations of this glyph not just Helvetica Sans Serif.