Who are you? Accents

By only using the words 'who' 'are' and 'you?' we had a task to portray different accents around the world. This was a lot harder than I first thought. We are able to use different fonts, but I thought that I would stick to one to keep it simple. Our group had to use different accents to the other group therefore we came up with these 11 different accents;

• Scottish
• African
• Italian
• Texan
• Mexican
• Chinese
• German 
• Cockney
• Swedish 
• Somerset
• Brummie

After researching into each accent (which you will find on my Design Context Blog) I made these decisions of why I chose each font and each point size for each of my accents, also the decisions of whether the type is in upper or lower case.

Scottish accent;

For the Scottish accent I started by looking into typical Scottish typefaces, something which people could relate to Scotland. Therefor I chose the typeface, Charlemagne Std Bold, I thought it resembled Scotland well. I then researched into how they speak, therefore I went on youtube to hear how they spoke and found that they accentuate to 'AR' and 'YU' therefore made them bigger, I also did them all in capitals to show loudness.

African accent;

When looking to do the African accent, I thought that I would first listen to the accent, then type it in on google images and see what comes up. Finding this font called 'African' was perfect as it portrayed the accent as people associate this with the African accent, therefore I thought there was no need to enthesize any of the letters, as the font is strong enough on its own.

Italian accent;

After looking at Italian restaurant signs and listening to the Italian accent I decided to use the font Monotype Corsiva, as it is quite an italic font which is similar to the ones from Italian restaurants. The Italians also enthesize the 'ar' and roll their 'r's so I made the letters which they enthesize more, a larger point size.

Texan accent;

I noticed that most people link western fonts with the Texan accent. So going through my fontbook I found, Mesquite Std Medium, which is a western font, so I thought I would use that. I also thought that I would make the point size slightly larger for each letter, as when people speak the Texan accent, it sounds like everything is a question.

Mexican accent;

This is the font used for nando's the chicken restaurant and it's called, Taco Modern. I found this font on dafont, looking at Mexican fonts, I think that this immediately brings Mexico to mind, therefore I didn't change any of the point sizes for any of the letters.

Chinese accent;

When looking for a Chinese font to show the Chinese accent, I couldn't use an actual Chinese font as no-one would be able to read it. This is why I went on dafont and looked up Chinese fonts and found lots of different ones, and font, Gang of Three, which is the font I used. I think that this font is very clear and obvious that it is portraying a Chinese accent, therefore don't think it needs any other characteristics to help people see the accent.

German accent;

When I first thought about the German accent, I thought I would use a font from German propaganda posters. The typeface I thought would portray a German accent straight away would be Fraktur but I didn't have it so had to download it, then I found Moderne Fraktur, as it is a blackletter, script font, so it works really well. This also shows the German accent quite clearly therefore didn't accentuate any of the other letters.


Cockney accent;

I used Times New Roman for the cockney accent as when I typed in 'Cockney font's' on google images, it showed a lot of Roman fonts very basic and classic fonts, therefore I thought that it would be best if I used Times New Roman. I then decided to enthesize the key letters and sounds which people with the Cockney have, which is 'O' 'A' and 'U'.

Swedish accent;

When people think of the Swedish accent they think simple and clear, therefore I decided to use a gothic font. Also as Ikea is a Swedish company I thought I would look at the font that they used, which was Futura but then they changed it to Verdanna, therefore I thought I should use Futura, it is a popular gothic font. As it is suppose to be simple I decided to not add anything else to it, keep it simple.

Somerset accent;

For the somerset accent I decided to type it into google images, and found that there was a font called 'Somerset' and it was perfect, but I couldn't download it therefore I found Optima which is quite similar to Somerset. A mixture between gothic and script but more gothic. I also listened to how they speak and enthesized the 'are' because with the somerset accent it holds it's 'R' for a long time and is the biggest characteristic it has.

Brummie accent;

For the Brummie accent I used Gill Sans as the font as I thought there wasn't a font which represents them fully, therefore I manipulated the actual letter to accentuate which letters they make more obvious when they are speaking, and this is what I imagine that it would look like.

The session;
In the session we had to swap tables with someone else in our group, then organise their different accents into different catagories of German, Cockney etc.

This was our starting point, we decided to lay out one set of accents, then match each of the other sets to what we thought each one was. This process was harder than we thought as we initially were going to do one at a time, but then I think we may have got too giddy, and just started putting them down where we thought they should go with no structure.

Applying each accent down into piles with no structure made it difficult when it came to the last few. When organising these sets we found that lots of different people had approached this task in different ways, some have used different fonts to show different accents, some have used a varience of upper and lower case letter, some have used larger and smaller point sizes, and some have used all of the above.

These are all of our different sets organised into the accents we think that they are in. Although this was a difficult task to get perfect, we thought that there was three accents that we got correct.

These are the three accents which we, as a group, thought that we had got correct. The Texan accent, the German accent and the Cockney accent. We wrote on the back of each of the accents what we thought they were, so that we could see if they were correct.

When we went back to our table and organised them into the accent groups that were correct, then went round each table to see if anyone got any of their three accents, that they chose as perfect, right. The people who organised ours didn't write on the back of all of the accents therefore we couldn't see if they got them all right or not although the ones which were written weren't right. We found in this task that people portray things differently to others therefore it was quite difficult to do.