Typography - Final Project
30/10/19 - 20/11/19 (Week 10 - Week 13)
Atiqah Farzana Binti Syalleh Karimyee (0336740)
Typography
Final Project
LECTURE NOTES
Week 10
(30/10/19)
Week 11
(06/11/19)
Week 12
(13/11/19)
INSTRUCTIONS
Assignment brief:
Final Project - Typography: Expression, Hierarchy, and Composition
(Week 10 - Week 13)
30/10/19 - 20/11/19
As out part of our final project, we were told to bring a few materials in order to produce our own placard/ protest board with our single-line manifesto on design and society.
1. 5'- 7' broomstick/ handle.
2. Cardboard or corrugated board
3. Single-line manifesto
4. Newspaper
5. Chinese Ink/ paint
6. Glue gun (optional)
I came up with a few ideas for my manifesto.
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| Fig. 1.1 Manifesto Ideas/ Sketches |
I had a few manifestos that I liked:
1. (Good) Great design lasts forever
2. Ignore design that ignores people
3. There is no design without discipline
4. Design is nothing without discipline
Mr. Vinod told me to chose the second one: "Ignore design that ignores people"
I went ahead and started sketching out a few compositions. Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul wanted the words to have more of a "design" aspect, not like a normal protest board usually is. They did not want us to use symbols and to focus more on the message and it's typeface.
I wanted the words "Ignore" to be big and bold, whilst "design" would be smaller and flow-y, and "people" being very grey and faded. This is to represent how the people are being ignored by bad design, and vice versa.
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| Fig. 1.2 "Ignore design that ignores people": Composition Ideas |
After I figured out a design, I started sketching it out in pencil on my board.
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| Fig. 1.3 "Ignore design that ignores people": Initial Sketch |
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| Fig. 1.4 "Ignore design that ignores people": Inked |
I was actually done at this point, but my placard felt kind of plain so I decided to add some colour to it. I used red paint for some of the strokes in "design" just to add a bit of pop to the design.
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| Fig. 1.4 "Ignore design that ignores people": Final Placard |
The word "people" did not come out as transparent as I wanted it to, and the watercolour also tore off some of the paper. Other than that, I think the "ignore" and "ignores" turned out quite alright.
We then had to glue our broomstick onto the placard and take a picture of ourselves with our placard.
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| Fig. 1.5 "Ignore design that ignores people": Final Placard and Me |
Week 11 (06/11/19)
After finishing our placard, we now had to design it digitally on Adobe Illustrator. This gave us a chance to touch up our design or even change it completely.
We were only allowed to use the fonts from the 9 type families that were given to us earlier in the semester, so that was a bit limiting. We were also advised to not use too many colours or symbols/ graphics as they wanted us to focus more on the composition of the design.
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| Fig. 1.6 "Ignore design that ignores people": Composition Ideas |
I made several designs and compositions with the different types, but Mr. Vinod liked this one in particular:
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| Fig. 1.7 "Ignore design that ignores people": First Attempt |
Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul told me that the kerning for "design" and "people" was too tight, and that I should make it just a bit wider. At first, I only had a white background and Mr. Vinod also told me to add a solid colour that would not stand out too much so I went with a light grey.
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| Fig. 1.8 "Ignore design that ignores people": First Attempt |
Mr. Shamsul suggested that "design" and "people" should be white to contrast the "ignore(s)" which are both in black. I showed him my animation progress so far and he said that it would be better to have only the "people" to be fading out. I think this was a better idea because it creates a more dramatic effect and also refers back to how the people are being ignored. Other than that, Mr. Shamsul also told me to add more layers so that the "people" would fade out smoothly and gradually.
With that in mind, I had a clearer vision of how I wanted to do my animation. Whilst starting it, I wanted to make the background a bit darker so that the "people" can go through more shades until it reaches the background colour.
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| Fig. 1.9 "Ignore design that ignores people": Final Attempt |
Fig. 1.10 "Ignore design that ignores people": PDF
After finishing my poster, I immediately started my animation as Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul wanted it done by the end of class.
Whilst doing it, I found it was a bit difficult to use the preset shades that Illustrator provided as they were were very limited. I found a list of grey shades so I just used the eyedropper tool to select and use the colours.
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| Fig. 1.11 Grey Shades |
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| Fig. 1.12 "Ignore design that ignores people": Artboards |
I spent much longer that I had expected just to align everything properly. In the end
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| Fig. 1.13 "Ignore design that ignores people": Photoshop Frames |
Here is the final gif:
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| Fig. 1.14" Ignore design that ignores people": Final GIF |
For the final submission, we had to print out the final poster in A3 size and frame it.
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| Fig. 1.15 "Ignore design that ignores people": A3 Frame |
FEEDBACK:
Week 10: Specific feedback: Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul once again commented on how my font is very "quirky" and "weird", especially my letter "e". That was hat I was going for, though, so I took it as a good thing. Overall, everything looked good and I was not asked to make anymore changes for my composition for my composition for the "god is in the kerning" work. Other than that, when I showed my ideas for my manifestos, Mr. Vinod liked "ignore design that ignores people". He and Mr. Shamsul wanted the placard to look more like a design rather than a protest board (which makes sense considering that it wasn't made for an actual protest).
General feedback: No feedback given.
Week 11: Specific feedback: I showed my design to Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul and they said to scrap out what I've done and try a new composition. Mr. Vinod said that I should try using different weights to some words to emphasize them more such as "ignore". Mr. Shamsul also said that my 2nd project needed to be changed as my composition for my "god is in the kerning" was not very good. The space inbetween "is" and "in" is too wide, but he told me to change it completely.
General feedback: We should use incognito mode to view our blogs to recheck whether our pdfs can be seen.
Week 12: Specific feedback: Mr. Vinod liked my first idea, so I was relieved. He told me to increase the kerning with "design" and "people" just a bit more because it was too tight. Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul asked me why I made those words grey, and I explained that it was like the design and people were being ignored. They also asked why I made "that" grey in colour and I said that it was because if it was in black, it would stand out too much and draw attention to the middle of the poster. They agreed, and Mr. Vinod instructed me to make the spaces for everything the same, and to start thinking of a background; he suggested tones and gradients. Mr. Vinod also suggested that for my animation, the grey words can be fading, which was something I was planning on doing.
General feedback: Mr. Shamsul told us to convert the document size from A3 to A4 so that our computer would not crash when we do our animation. The resolution should also be 72dpi and not 300dpi (or our computer will crash for sure). Mr. Vinod reminded us again that we cannot distort the typeface, and that "distorting the typeface results in an immediate failure." To know if we accidentally distorted our typeface, press ctrl + t and make sure that the type is at 100% and not 90% or anything else.
REFLECTION
Experiences:
Week 10 (30/10/19); I was exhausted with showing Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul my manifesto ideas because they kept rejecting it. After I finally got one approved, they continued to reject my design ideas for it. Week 11 (06/11/19); Making the placard took much longer than I expected, mainly because Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul kept rejecting my designs. The writing and painting process also took quite some time because we were working on a large board. Week 12 (13/11/19); I had about 10 different designs and Mr. Vinod chose my first one, so I felt like I did all that work for nothing. Of course, it wasn't all for nothing because I was able to create new compositions and practice my Illustrator skills with different effects such as warp.
Observations:
Week 10 (30/10/19); A lot of people wanted to use their mother tongue for their placard, which I thought was very interesting and added diversity to the topic of design in society. Week 11 (06/11/19); I saw that a lot of my classmates used black and red for their placards. I don't think anyone used any other colour other than that, but I understand that those colours are very bold and powerful and stands out a lot. Week 12 (13/11/19); A lot of people were doing very different layouts and compositions and I felt like there was a good mixture of complicated and simple designs.
Findings:
Week 10 (30/10/19); I found that it is better to make a lot of ideas of different things rather than a lot of ideas of the same thing but just slightly altered because it doesn't give much room for improvement. Week 11 (06/11/19); I found that Chinese ink was very watery and absorbed right into my board, so I had to use quite a lot of it. It was also difficult to make a lighter colour because when I added water, it absorbed right into the board and made the some of the paper tear. Week 12 (13/11/19); Aligning all the artboards was really a hassle and I had to spend time zooming into each artboard to make sure everything was in place.
FURTHER READING
Type Matters! by Jim Williams
(30/10/19 - 14/11/19)
"Good typography is about visualising language through the arrangement, composition and choice of type."
Eye Candy by David Ho Ming Aun and Yip Jinchi
(30/10/19 - 14/11/19)
I remember at the very start of the semester when Mr.Vinod was explaining about further reading, he mentioned that Ms. Jinchi had a book in the school library that we could borrow. Unfortunately, I was unable to find it until the last few weeks of the semester.
This book highlights the questions of whether typefaces are able to affect people's perception of taste and to what extent do they do this.
A test was carried out- different beverages were set in plastic cups with a sign that said "drink me" in different typefaces for each cup, and a group of people were to taste them. A lot of questions were asked to these participants, but the answer that I liked the most was when asked what they think of the claim that typefaces can affect your perception of taste, one participant said that they thought not only does the typeface affects taste, but also the product packaging alltogether. Colour, size and shape of a packaging could possible attract or even throw off a customer. I think that packaging is indeed an important aspect in affecting taste, as well as typography.
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