Garamond was designed by Claude Garamond in 1532 in France. It was based on the typeface Aldus Manutius. Due to it being created in the early 16th century, technology was minimal and a grid therefore wasn't used to produce Garamond, meaning that it is wonky and the serif's aren't straight, neither are the stems. The lines also aren't perfectly straight either, they're wiggly and have bumps in them. Minute ones but when you start analysing the typeface they stick out at you like crazy.
This therefore made it very difficult for me to create an accurate grid for Garamond that worked for every letter of the alphabet, because Garamond simply didn't follow one and it proved impossible to produce one.
So instead of producing a grid based around one letterform that fitted my whole alphabet, and using it to create the rest of the letters, I traced over Garamond using light weight paper and added bits onto my serif's to make them longer, and also onto the stems to give them a heavier weight. When it came to producing this typeface digitally I applied guides to each letterform on Adobe Illustrator to ensure the stems were straight and each serif on each letterform was the same length, so it didn't look excessively wonky, although with massive serif's it is going to look wonky no matter what.
This worked really well for me in adding order and structure to my designs, however when I put all my letterforms together as a whole alphabet, I found the weight of serif's, for example on the "m" and the "E" varied a lot, which was a common feature amongst all of the letterforms, also in the weight of the general letterforms. This could have been avoided by simply setting a universal height for my serif's, and a universal weight for the general letterforms. However I feel this adds a touch of hand drawn qualities to my typeface, making it appear homely and friendly, with I feel reflects my theme social.
However next time I will definitely set a rule as to the weight of serif's and stems to ensure an equal typeface.
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