As an initial idea generator, I decided to print out characters of baskerville and collaged them together to see if any interesting forms or compositions would emerge.
From there I scanned in the collage and created some cropped sections of interesting geometric areas to sketch from. By doing this I created abstracted aspects of Baskerville which contributed to a rather graphic feel.
Taking this a step further, I merged each abstracted section together to create a long strip of abstracted Baskerville. I really liked this outcome, however, in the context of a type specimen, I feel that it is too modernised to capture the true essence of Baskerville. I felt as though I needed to sketch compositions that felt more authentic to the typeface and lean into the still slightly decorative / serif aspects of the font.
I completed a series of 4 sketches to trial a few ideas I had in my head. I felt as though they all were too busy and could use a lot of refinement. Out of this exercise, I feel that only the fourth sketch had any potential. However, this needed a lot of refinement.
I then pulled these into a digital sketching platform to see to what extent I could refine the designs. I was a lot happier with these and settled on the 4th sketch as the most visually interesting while not being over-designed.