OUGD403: PROVERBALLY YOURS//MESSAGE AND INTERPRETATION

'Laughter is the best medicine' 

Some ideas for just text style posters.  I think if I went with the poster with the medicine bottle and the proverb as the label the text poster on the left would suit that as a set better because the same font is being used, it will look more like a sequence, whereas with the text poster on the right, even though I like the red cross as a symbol I don't think it fits well with what i'm trying to convey.

Some clearer ides (image and text combined):  I think i prefer the one on the left, I think it works better as a poster

My proverb: 'Laughter is the best medicine'

-laughter is a powerful antidote to stress, pain and conflict

-laughter relaxes the whole body

-laughter boosts the immune system 

-laughter protects he heart

-laughter dissolves distressing emotions

-laughter helps you relax and restore

-Humor shifts perspective 

People feel less pain after a good laugh because it may cause the body to release chemicals that act as a natural pain killer, research has suggested.
I have put together some basic notes and thumb nail sketches for initial ideas for my three posters (one with just text, one with just image and one with a combination of both.  Ideas that stood out to me from the beginning were the following: -a bottle of medicine with the proverb written on the label, a bottle of painkillers spilt open with the tablets reading 'laughter is the best medicine' the proverb text curved into the shape of a smile etc.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES:TYPOGRAPHY//OUGD404

Semotics: sign, symbol, signifier

Visual: Metaphor, metonym, synecdoche

Visual metaphor-is used to transfer the meaning from one image to another

Visual metonym-is a symbolic image that is used to make reference to something with a more literal meaning.

Words are 'pictures of letters'

Legibility: glyphs (individual characters) in text are understandable or recognisable based on appearance.

Counter: The negative space within a letter form, either fully or partially enclosed.

Readability: Influenced by line length, primary and secondary leading.

We looked at different newspaper spreads from papers such as The Guardian, Daily Mirror, The Times etc.  And counted how many different fonts were used on one sheet of each different paper, then reconstructed them in a different way:

SYMBOL

SIGN

SIGNIFIER:

Significant part of communicating.

Typeface:  A collection of characters, letters, numbers, symbols and punctuation which have the same design.

Font:  Physical means used to create a typeface

Font, typeface, font family, weight, stroke, upper case/lower case, tracking, kerning.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES:TYPOGRAPHY//OUGD404

For this task we had to find five different type faces and print them out in various measurements, then using these as starting points we had to cut them up and rearrange them into the same letter but slightly edited, adding different sections onto various parts of the letters until we had five newly styled letter forms.

Once we'd done this we had to draw out our five new type faces and come up with fitting names according to the style and with guidance:

-BLOCK, GOTHIC, ROMAN, SCRIPT

-SERIF, SANS SERIF, SCRIPT, BLACK LETTER

Comic block serif bold

Old black letter block bold face

Dash san serif regular

Flick serif regular

Double line roman regular

We then had to choose a type face out of the five already created and make a font family for them including:

-light/italic, regular/italic, bold/italic, ultra bold condensed.

From looking at everyones set of letters in the lessons one of the obvious differences, in terms of displaying it as a font family, was the change from light to ultra bold condensed, some peoples change was quite obvious from a smaller, thinner scale to a larger, bolder style whereas others, such as mine, had a more subtle transformation.

Old black letter block bold face

light/italic

regular/italic

bold/italic

OUGD403//ALPHABET SOUP TYPEFACE:

For part of the brief we had to make our partner a name badge to see if it would work on a smaller scale.  The smaller I made the font, however, the harder it was to make out the detail within each letter, I think my typeface works best in a bigger size and up close because it allows you to see the further detail.

OUGD403//ALPHABET SOUP TYPEFACE:

 After looking at all my ideas I decided to go with something completely different after having a discussion in my crit.  We looked at the answers to the interview that Jenna had given and picked up on a discussion about the person she admired the most which was her grandma.  We discussed various stereotypes of grandmas coming up with the following:

-knitting

-armchairs

-hot water bottles

-false teeth

-walking stick

The most obvious one being knitting, so i decided to make a typeface based on Jenna's person she admired most as I figured this is quite an important part of Jenna's life. Based on the stereotype of knitting I went with a basic font, Garamond, and edited it to look as though the detail inside each letterform was thread and wool from knitting, then to make it more distinctive of knitting, I added knitting needles at the top of each letter.  I think the font works better on a larger scale and up close because of the detail within the letter.

OUGD403//ALPHABET SOUP TYPEFACE:

My initial idea for Jenna's alphabet was to play on her fear of seaweed, I thought this would be an interesting approach because of the various shapes, I thought it would give me room to develop an unusual style of alphabet. However, I found the type face quite unrealistic and limiting and so decided to change direction.

After I had looked at seaweed I decided to look at Jenna's first memory of when she fell down the stairs. I thought this would generate quite interesting shapes when altering an already existing typeface, I did some initial sketches of stairs and spiral staircases and then added a similar image to certain fonts including Helvetica. I'm still going to play around with some basic ideas before I decide which one works best, although I like the instant first look of the stairs typeface better than the seaweed.

Other things I took away from the interview about Jenna:
Likes: going out with friends, smiley person, energetic, neat in terms of graphic design work and messy in general, just some small things I gathered from the interview.
I've decided to go in a different direction now, I had three main initial ideas, which go as followed:
-Seaweed typeface: After looking, in detail, at the answers from the interview I decided to take Jenna's fear of seaweed and using imagery from the seaweeds interesting shapes make a new typeface.
-Staircase typeface: After looking at the seaweed idea I then decided I wanted to do something different and so used Jenna's earliest memory of falling down the stairs to include basic step shapes in my letter forms.
Happy typeface: My final idea was the most simple but the one I found looked visually more appealing and worked best as an actual typeface. I used a basic font, Helvetica, and slightly edited the shape of each letter according to a certain characteristic I found out about Jenna in the interview task. The changes are subtle, the basic idea is I have the letter from and take a line that makes up one peice of the letter and curve it to symbolise a 'smile' as Jenna is quite a happy, smiley person.

ALPHABET SOUP//OUGD403AS1

For this brief we have to design a typeface that represents the personality/character of my partner.  My partner was Jenna, so we had to fill out a questionnaire to get a better idea of our partners personality:
-what is our greatest fear?seaweed
-what is your earliest memory?falling down the stairs
-which living person do you admire most and why?my grandma
-what is the trait you most deplore in yourself?having a bad memory
-what is the trait you most deplore in others?self centered
-what is your most treasured possession?my dog
-where would you like to live?somewhere sunny
-what makes you unhappy?having to have a cold shower
-what is your favourite smell?my perfume-hugo boss orange
-what do you consider to be your biggest achievement?getting into uni

Taking this information into consideration I will depict the best pieces of information to try and show an alphabet that portrays Jenna.  Words that obviously stood out at first for making a new typeface (from an already existing typeface) were words such as seaweed,stairs, her grandma and sunny.  I will make some basic sketches using some basic ideas to try and progress further.

ALPHABET SOUP//OUGD403AS1

For this task I had the word 'dissolve' so I looked at various ways of trying to portray a dissolved effect through type.  I found it quite hard to generate ten ideas that worked well, however as the task went on I discovered a more subtle way of trying to show the word 'dissolve'.  The most obvious way, for me, was to have the letter disintegrating from a top angle of the letter, as though dissolving in water and breaking upwards.  Another idea I had was to run the pen with water, however, it didn't meet the requirments of the brief (all in black) because the water turned the pen ink purple.  Other ideas included having the letter drawn over each other multiple times in a spiral to show a whirlpool effect, as if gradually getting further and further into the distance.  Another idea was not finishing the letter as though part of it had dissolved. 

ALPHABET SOUP//OUGD403AS1

Quick sketches of letters and objects, to try and convey a movement from a simple sketch, for example various ways of making a ball look like its moving through use of lines and space within the frame.  Making the 'L' look big, slow, reversed etc.  These were starting methods to help us progress onto displaying our word, mine being dissolve.

 

Initial thumbnail idea for the word 'DISSOLVE':

Quick sketches and ideas for my dissolving typeface: