Bob the typeface

Development of a custom sans-serif handwritten typeface inspired by the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, featuring a movie poster and merchandise concepts.

Typeface cover card, saying: "BOB. Your friendly neighbourhood typeface. Inspired by the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once." Black background, decorative googly eyes.

Movie poster for 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' with swirling text and multiple stylized eyeballs on a black background.

Collection of black merchandise including t-shirts, tote bags, and mugs with cosmic-themed phrases in pink and yellow, featuring designs like 'Just Be a Rock', 'The universe is so much bigger than you realize', and circular text reading 'Everything everywhere all at once.'

Goal

Create a custom typeface that would suit a selected movie's (Everything Everywhere All at Once) vibe, mood, and target audience, building a design system including a movie poster and merchandise.

Challenge

Creating a handwritten typeface that didn't feel outdated and 2000-esque,

Balancing character and legibility; maintaining consistency across all letters and symbols,

Making the typeface the main character of the merch and the poster.

Strategy

Typography:

Expressive, bold
Featuring some sort of handwritten, rough feel to highlight the raw emotional aspect
Featuring a nod to Chinese brush lettering

Poster:

Chaotic, untraditional composition
Dynamic layout
Vibrant bold colors, wide color palette
Featuring a sense of movement to highlight the multiverse aspect

Target Audience

Indie film lovers and fans of A24 in particular
Millenials and GenZ of all genders
People who enjoy fast-paced, unconventional storytelling
Immigrants and children of immigrants
People who are drawn to weird, undefinable, fantasy/sci-fi movies
People with a sense of humor

Process

Moodboard

Collage of eight colorful, artistic typography posters with varied fonts and layered text styles.

Choice of Medium

The hardest part of the sketching process was figuring out the medium I wanted to use, down to the specific brush I was using. On the right are options I explored:

Pencil
Small calligraphy brush
Flat rough brush
Marker with a blunt tip
Flat sleek brush

Blue pencil, two water brushes with clear barrels, a wooden paintbrush, and a white sketch marker arranged vertically on a white surface.

Sketches

The process involved a lot of trial and error, working with mediums that I hadn't picked up in a while, remembering how to paint with watercolors, controlling stroke widths and my handwriting.

Collage of different handwritten alphabet styles showcasing both uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and stroke writing samples on lined and blank paper sheets.

Hand-drawn uppercase English alphabet letters A to Z and numbers 1 to 9 on lined paper.

Handwritten lowercase alphabet letters a to z and numbers 1 through 0 on lined paper.

Digital Typeface Process

The typeface process included image tracing the sketches to preserve the texture and manually fixing each letter to ensure consistent shapes, strokes and imperfections.

Handwritten uppercase letters A to N on lined paper, each letter repeated in black, pink, blue, and purple colors.

Hand-drawn uppercase letters O to Z in rows, with each letter in black followed by repetitions in pink, blue, and purple on lined paper.

Handwritten lowercase letters a to n repeated in black, pink, blue, and purple ink on lined handwriting practice paper.

Lowercase letters o to z written in black, pink, blue, and purple colors on lined paper for handwriting practice.

Handwritten numbers 1 to 9 and 0 in black, pink, and blue ink, arranged in rows on lined paper.

Comparison of various punctuation marks arranged in pairs on lined paper, with each pair shown in pink and blue colors including comma, semicolon, quotation marks, exclamation mark, question mark, slash, backslash, hashtag, percent, parentheses, asterisk, hyphen, at symbol, plus, ampersand, underscore, dollar sign, equals, greater than, and less than symbols.

Introducing...

Full set of characters of the Bob typeface.

Poster Process

The poster process involved a lot of playing with colors, layouts and compositions.

Collage of seven movie posters for the film 'Everything Everywhere All at Once,' featuring colorful and spiral text designs with cast names and April 8 release date.

Final Poster

Featuring a friendly but bold colour palette, weird and unsettling elements, dynamic composition conveying the sense of movement, and making the typeface shine as the main character.

Movie poster for 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' with swirling text forming a vortex surrounded by cartoon eyes on a black background.

Merch Design

Design of three t-shirts (front and back), three tote bags and three mugs, using the poster's branding and quotes from the movie.

Black merch collection with colorful eye designs and inspirational phrases including 'Just Be A Rock', 'Everything Everywhere All At Once', and 'The Universe Is So Much Bigger Than You Realize' on t-shirts, tote bags, and mugs.