Additional Type as Image research

Sarah Watts

I think the key to this is the successful interaction between type and image, as well as appropriate and muted colour palette as well as a nice paper stock. things to bare in mind.

J Galiana

I really like this and the way it's been contextualised, I'm wondering whether it's worth just doing some contextual quotes of my typefaces, not to print necassarily, but just to see them function.

Julene of designworklife

I just liked how ornate and beautiful this was, not to mention the extreme craft that went into it.

Astrid Chesney

I chose this because o the delicate way it's displayed and it's colour choice does make it very much 'blue' and it's something I should bare in mind when doing my type

Andrew Smith



Apart from having an awful website layout, he does amazing hand drawn type, here are a few examples I like, I think they work because of their bold colour choices and well thought out typographical layout. I think I need to bare in mind what these typefaces are goin to look like laid out.

Negotiated brief research part ii

So this is the part where I look at the words I've picked and try and match type characteristics to them. I can use this to identify typefaces I could use as a starting point to draw from.

Angry:
-Bold
-Uppercase
-sans serif
-angular
-large counters
Tangy:
-Upper case
-Serif
-Angular
-No counters
Cowardly:
-lower case
-small counters
-sans serif
-'shaking'
Gooey:
-upper case
-sans serif
Melencholy:
-lower case
-serif
Royal:
-upper case
-serif
-italic

I also think it's important to find imagery I can work into the design:

Green
This work by Jonny shows how gooey or a similar aesthetic can be made using texture to create a dripping effect:


Similarly, fonts used for horror films have a similar quality that I can draw from.






Both these by Jon Contino are appropriate to gooey.

Red
I chose this example by Edgar Reyes because of the words 'Fiesta' and 'en mexico'
it's angular and sketchy nature makes it look quite aggressive to my eyes.

Again, big bold angular type seems to say aggression to me in this piece by Stuart DBDD


Blue

This piece by James Gulliver Hancock may seem a little odd, but I think a serif font thats very thin could work quite effectively to demonstrate melancholy and I think I'll use this as a starting point.

I also think that working in textures like the ones in this piece could give a sort of delicate, melancholic feel.

Orange


In this illustration by Fiodor Sumkin. I think the words 'Grind' and 'out' have a nice qaulity to the serifs they use, if I use a similar amount of serif embellishments but make them even more angular, I can make a very sharp, hopefully citrus-like typeface.
Again, the manipulation of serifs in this piece by Nate Williams makes the font appear quite sharp and I could easily manipulate smething like this to make it seem 'citrus'.

Yellow
This piece by Jade Sibley sort of suits cowardly in that it's a little wobbley and there are no counters, which kind of suggests it's closed off. If I were to manipulate something like this to make it look like it was shaking and perhaps make it a bit smaller too, then it might work effectively to demonstrate cowardice.


Jon Contino, the way the word 'ghost' is written with it's shakey lines could be quite representative of cowardice too.

Violet

Again, the font above is created by Jon Contino, the script style and serif embellishments really create a feel of royalty and luxary.

Similarly, the embellishments on this piece by DiR also create a feel of luxury.

Negotiated brief Research

So, I'm designing typefaces around the colours of the spectrum so I thought it was first important to understand what the spectrum is:
"The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to (can be detected by) the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 750 nm.[1] In terms of frequency, this corresponds to a band in the vicinity of 400-790 THz. A light-adapted eye generally has its maximum sensitivity at around 555 nm (540 THz), in the green region of the optical spectrum (see: luminosity function). The spectrum does not, however, contain all the colors that the human eyes and brain can distinguish. Unsaturated colors such as pink, or purple variations such as magenta, are absent, for example, because they can only be made by a mix of multiple wavelengths." In other words, colours of the spectrum are produced by the different wavelengths of light, when they're all added together they make white light.

The colours are; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. It's important to understand the connotative, cultural and social understandings of each of these colours to make the typefaces really appropriate and interpretable by other people. Indigo is debatable as a colour of the spectrum 'The human eye is relatively insensitive to indigo's frequencies, and some otherwise well-sighted people cannot distinguish indigo from blue and violet. For this reason some commentators, including Isaac Asimov, have suggested that indigo should not be regarded as a color in its own right but merely as a shade of blue or violet' with this in mind and limited time to create these typefaces, I think I'm going to exclude indigo.

As well as finding basic facts out about each colour,I have asked people to give me words that spring to mind when they think of that colour.

Important facts about the colour Red:
-'Red is used as a symbol of guilt, sin and anger, often as connected with blood or sex.'
-'Another popular example of this is in the phrase "caught red-handed", meaning either caught in an act of crime or caught with the blood of murder still on one's hands.'
-'Red catches people's attention, and can be used in a negative way to indicate danger and emergency'
- Mars is called the Red Planet because of the reddish color imparted to its surface by the abundant iron oxide present there.[12] Astronomical objects which are moving away from the observer exhibit a red shift. Jupiter's surface displays a Great Red Spot, a football-shaped area south of the planet's equator. Astronomers believe the spot to be some kind of storm

Words people assosciate with the colour Red:
-Anger
-Blood
-Sharp
-Aggressive
-Warning
-Violent.
Most people responded with anger, aggression or blood, giving me a key indicator that I have to make the typeface indicative of these things. I will use my sketchbook work to develop how to visualise anger and aggression.


Facts about Orange:
-Orange is the national colour of the Netherlands, because its royal family of Orange-Nassau used to own the principality of Orange
-Orange in general represents Hinduism.
-The colours orange and black represent the holiday Halloween (31 October) because orange is the colour of pumpkins and black is the colour of night and is associated with doom, despair and darkness.

Like Red, I don't find these facts much to work with visually, and would rather go off of the interpretations of other students.

Words people assosciate with the colour Orange:
-Vibrant
-Summery
-Citrus
-Tangy
-fruity
I personally agree with the words citrus and tangy the most, so I'm going to work on visually interpreting that.

Facts About The Colour Yellow:
-In the English language, yellow has traditionally been associated with jaundice and cowardice.
-Yellowcake (also known as urania and uranic oxide) is concentrated uranium oxide, obtained through the milling of uranium ore. Yellowcake is used in the preparation of fuel for nuclear reactors and in uranium enrichment, one of the essential steps for creating nuclear weapons.
-The March 1967 album by Donovan called Mellow Yellow was very popular among the hippies. The featured song on the album, "Mellow Yellow", popularized during the Spring of 1967 a widely believed hoax that it was possible to get high by smoking scrapings from the inside of banana peels

Words people assosciate with the colour yellow
-Mellow
-chilled
-yellow-bellied
-coward
-smooth
-bananas
I think that with yellow, the idea of making it look cowardly seems much more appealing than the facts about nuclear bomb making and less cliche than the idea of yellow as mellow or cheesy as using bananas to make a figurative illustration of the letters. So yellow is cowardly

Facts about Green:
-In many folklores and literatures, green has traditionally been used to symbolize nature and its embodied attributes, namely those of life, fertility, and rebirth. Green was symbolic of resurrection and immortality in Ancient Egypt; the god Osiris was depicted as green-skinned.[29] It is often used to describe foliage
-Green is also used to describe jealousy and envy.
-Green is also known to have signified witchcraft, devilry and evil for its association with faeries and spirits of early English folklore. It also had an association with decay and toxicity
-A physically-ill person is said to look green around the gills.
-In areas that use the U.S. Dollar as currency, green carries a connotation of money, wealth, and capitalism, because green is the color of United States banknotes, giving rise to the slang term greenback for cash.


Words people assosciate with the colour Green:
-Nature
-Trees
-Envy
-Sickness
-Gooey
-Poison
I'm torn between the idea of poison/gooey which go together quite nice and nature. I think nature is quite predictable, but theres the possibility of creating something really ornate and interesting. I have to weigh that up with the purpose of what I'm doing, I have to say that it's more likely that people will understand nature, but gooey could also be really intersting and a lot less cliche, for now, although I may hcange my mind Green is Poison/Gooey.


Facts about the colour Blue:
-In the English language, blue may refer to the feeling of sadness. "He was feeling blue". This is because blue was related to rain, or storms, and in Greek mythology, the god Zeus would make rain when he was sad (crying), and a storm when he was angry.
-In German, on the other hand, to be "blue" (blau sein) is to be drunk. This derives from the ancient use of urine (which is produced copiously by the human body after drinking alcohol) in dyeing cloth blue with woad or indigo. It may also be in relation to rain, which is usually regarded as a trigger of depressive emotions.
-Blue is commonly used in the Western hemisphere to symbolize the male gender in contrast to pink used for females.
-Dark blue represents knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness.[citation needed] In Western civilisation, those in the upper classes in high places of political or economic power often wear dark blue suits. Ordinary members of the working class (especially those who work in the computer industry) often refer derisively to these management functionaries as the suits. This terminology is also used in the television industry--the network executives are often referred to by the creative people


Words people assosciate with the colour Blue:
-sadness
-melencholy
-depression
-rain
-the ocean
-the sky
-jazz (the blues)
-flowing
I think I like the challenge of making the type appear sad and melencholy, as a pose to making it ocean-like, like i did in the book project.


Facts About The Colour Violet:
-In the United Kingdom it is traditional to package chocolate in violet colored packaging because of the association of the color royal purple with luxury
-Psychics who claim to be able to observe the aura with their third eye report that those who are practicing occultists (magical thaumaturgists) often have a violet aura
-In Japan, purple is known as the color of death.

There wasn't a lot on violet, though I'm fascinated by it's connotations with the occult. Whilst this might not be what people commonly assosciate it with, I think it would be interesting to explore this.


Words people assosciate with the colour Violet:

-Royalty
-ornate (in connection with royalty)
-Chocolate
-delicate (shrinking violet)
Whilst the idea of occult does interest me, I can't pass up the chance to create something really ornate to do with royalty, so violet is royalty.

Now I've done this, it's important to look at these traits and identify the way that they may be represented typographically i.e. through the use of coutners, ascenders, descenders, uppercase/lowercase etc.

Signage Brief Research

Here are just some visuals on how signage works simply and effectively. It needs to get to the point quickly and as little detail as possible is useful, though if there is detail it needs not to be distracting or a necessary part of the immediate interpretation of the image. Bold colour choices seem to work effectively, also colour coding is helpful too.

Bookworks research

Definition of a book: 1.a written work or composition that has been published
2.physical objects consisting of a number of pages bound together

However, this idea of a book revolves around the format of what a book is, however it doesn't really suggest what a book can be. Personally, I think that a book is simply a device in which information of any kind is held. A DVD or a CD is a form of book, or at least an extension of the idea, holding video and music files instead of written words and illustrations. Here are some examples of how other designers have pushed the idea of book.

Sue Blackwell

Sue Blackwell uses existing book and creates 3 dimensional imagery within the books that reflect the content, the image above uses Alice In Wonderland to create imagery from the tea party. This sort of uses the traditional form of a book to create an illustration. The difficulty with this from the perspective of image as part of design is that it isn't very functional and in fact removes the functionality of the book as a readable body of work making this a more fine art piece. Though it's good to bare in mind how experimental I can go with the manufacture of a book.

Georgia Russell



Georgia Russell similarly plays with the concept of book to create fine art pieces. I really like the vibrancy of colours and the playing with cutting away from the book and the patternt hat this can make.

Brian Dettmer

Brian Dettmer uses a similar approach to Sue Blackwell, however he creates elaborate 3D diaramas. Again this plays with the traditional form of a book, I don't think I'm going to do something like this, I'd rather look at what a book could be, rather than playing with it's traditional format.

Ollie Saward (heeheee)
I chose to look at Ollie's first year book project because it really challenges the convention of what a book can be. There are no pages, no binding etc. It's a book in it's simplest form, a vehicle for information, in this case a series of found faces. Whilst I don't have time to create something this sophisticated, I do want to bring the concept of book to it's most basic, I think this will be kind of freeing as well as allow me to skimp a little on budget (of which I have very little)


For the book it's self we can pick to base it around a shape, a colour, a typeface or a sound. I thought it would be nice to combine the two, so I'm going to design a typeface around the colour blue, using the connotations and social interpretations it carries to inform it's form and style. Here are some facts about blue:
" * In the English language, blue often represents the human emotion of sadness, e.g. "He was feeling blue". In German, on the other hand, to be "blue" (blau sein) is to be drunk. This derives from the ancient use of urine (which is produced copiously by the human body after drinking alcohol) in dyeing cloth blue with woad or indigo.[5] It may also be in relation to rain, which is usually regarded as a trigger of depressive emotions.[6]

* Conversely blue, a very popular color[7] can represent happiness and optimism[8] as days with clearer, blue skies tend to be considered times where these emotions are more easily expressed. Many artistic contributions have been made referencing clear days with blue skies as part of the happiness or as a symbolism of the happiness the artist felt, such as Tony Bennett's Put on a Happy Face.[9] If this were untrue there would obviously be more complaints about days with clear blue skies.

* Blue is commonly used in the Western hemisphere to symbolize the male gender in contrast to pink used for females.

* Blue is associated in Christianity generally and Catholicism in particular, with the Virgin Mary.
* Blue in Hinduism: Many of the gods are depicted as having blue-coloured skin, particularly those associated with Vishnu, who is said to be the Preserver of the world and thus intimately connected to water. Krishna and Ram, Vishnu's avatars, are usually blue. Shiva, the Destroyer, is also depicted in light blue tones and is called neela kantha, or blue-throated, for having swallowed poison in an attempt to turn the tide of a battle between the gods and demons in the gods' favour.
* Blue in Judaism: In the Torah,[13] the Israelites were commanded to put fringes, tzitzit, on the corners of their garments, and to weave within these fringes a "twisted thread of blue (tekhelet)".[14] In ancient days, this blue thread was made from a dye extracted from a Mediterranean snail called the hilazon. Maimonides claimed that this blue was the colour of "the clear noonday sky"; Rashi, the colour of the evening sky.[15] According to several rabbinic sages, blue is the colour of God's Glory.[16] Staring at this colour aids in mediation, bringing us a glimpse of the "pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity", which is a likeness of the Throne of God.[17] (The Hebrew word for glory.) Many items in the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary in the wilderness, such as the menorah, many of the vessels, and the Ark of the Covenant, were covered with blue cloth when transported from place to place.[18]
* Blue in Islam: In verse 20:102 of the Qur’an, the word زرق zurq (plural of azraq 'blue') is used metaphorically for evildoers whose eyes are glazed with fear, as if the sclera is filmed over with a bluish tint.

Symbolism

* In Thailand, blue is associated with Friday on the Thai solar calendar. Anyone may wear blue on Fridays and anyone born on a Friday may adopt blue as their colour. The Thai language, however, is one that has had trouble distinguishing blue from green. The default word for Blue was recently สีน้ำเงิน literally, the colour of silver, a poetical reference to the silvery sheen of the deep blue sea. It now means Navy Blue, and the default word is now สีฟ้า literally, the colour of the sky.

Sociology

* Dark blue represents knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness.[citation needed] In Western civilisation, those in the upper classes in high places of political or economic power often wear dark blue suits. Ordinary members of the working class (especially those who work in the computer industry) often refer derisively to these management functionaries as the suits.[24] This terminology is also used in the television industry--the network executives are often referred to by the creative people (actors, directors, and screenwriters) as the suits.[25]
* Blue can also represent the working class. A blue-collar worker is a member of the working class who typically performs manual labour and earns an hourly wage. Industrial and manual workers wear durable clothing that can be dirty, soiled, or even scrapped at work. A popular element of such clothes has been a light or navy blue work shirt. Blue is also a popular colour for work coveralls."

I'm interested in blue's nature as serious and depressive as well as the visual imagery that the idea of ocean connotes. Obviously I want to be quite illustrative about the typeface so I'm looking to hand drawn type for inspiration.

Below is a piiece of illustration by Anna Wray, I think that trying to create something quite detailed and ornate in the typeface I create would be an aesthetic I'd like, btu I need to make sure I keep the content appropriate to the colour blue rather than making an unclear typeface for the sake of detail.

Below is some hand drawn type by Paula Mills, I like the style that she has chosen, however the colour choice is garish and a little unpleasant. It's important to remember colour choice can make or break a piece.

Conversely to the prior piece, I think the colour choices in this piece by Ray Fenwick are really nice.


I chose this typeface by Onomatopee because, whilst I do like it, legibility is an issue. It's hard to make out what the letters say, I need to ensure that theres a clarity to my typeface that allows it to function fully.


I really enjoy the way this piece by Ben Javens works. I like the hand drawn type and the colour choices (it might be worth trying to put a few shades of blue into my design) as well as the grainy aesthetic it has going on. The simplicity gives the piece a clarity that to much detail might of crowded. In designing my own typeface I have to beware of becoming too elaborate.

Animation Research.

A stop otion animation using light, it isn't exactly what we're doing, but I think in terms of helping me to visualise the outcome of what I'm doing, this is useful. I need to think of the area I'm cutting away as the only thing that will be visible in the entire animation.


This animation using sand is similar, but more complicated than what we're doing. the imagery is generated by taking away the sand and letting the light through and creates a similar visual aesthetic to what we're doing.


In terms of the letters I have, I'm going to use very simplistic representations of the letters. The O it's self will just be a counter-less oval shape, this allows me to work quite quickly on it. The exclamation mark is going to use a square dot as a pose to a circular dot, this lends it's self to the story boarding I've already been doing to it.

Research 2D to 3D to 2D

The words I got were Skier, France and Dancing, which I have to turn into an illustration and then recreate it in a 3D setting, before again turning it into a 2D photograph. When I think of France, I think of the Eiffel Tower:

And the colours of the french flag:

So I'm going to work those into my imagery.
And with skiers, I just think of skis as the most crucial ingredients, so I'm going to play on those too. I don't think an image is really necessary though.

In terms of visual style, I like the lo-fi sort of 3D resolution of the images below using coloured papers and card as well as other elements to create the image in 3D.
No Legacy illustration


Tactile book

I think the original image has to match this lo-fi aesthetic so work such as this by Agnese Bicocchi would really suit the feel of the imagery I want to go for.


James Gulliver Hancock:


Right, time to leap into action.

Hair Dryers

Ok so the brief for the image module today was to select a random object and represent it like an eye chart, below are a few examples. The challenge is to display the image across the different scales and have it visible and clear as to what it is from 20 feet away, this is designed to get us thinking about this in our own image work and how well it fits with the context where it will sit.


I just go the images above to give me a quick idea bout how the layout might need to work. Amber says to ignore the numbers at the side and the sort of line divides, I think this is probably a good idea however, I might include the lines stil because i think they're a nice aesthetic.


Ok so, then we had to pick a random object written on a pice of paper in a bag, I drew hairdryers which really really irritated me at the time. Anyway, I've seen quite a few 'out there' designs for hairdryers but part of the challenge is to create an immediately recognisable image. Below are some of the pictures I assosciate with the traditional shape of a hairdryer.



Traditional pictograms are good at this, they're designed specifically to be displayed and readable across a variety of scales and formats. Here are some for the London 2012 Olympics, they depict the sports they represent with great ease. My issue with stuff like this is that it's too dry and vectory. I would want my stuff to feel more organic and hand drawn.


I thought i'd show this as a BAD EXAMPLE of how image can be used over scale, these prints are too intricate and sketchy and alot of them I personally can't interpret... so it is a balancing acvt, if I make my images too ornate, I could end up with something as inddecypherale as these mad ol' pictograms.

Hand drawn type

I got the book 'handjob' and I thought it was useful in getting my creative juices flowing both in terms of type as image for my Image module and type to use in my idents for the Movie season brief, so here are some fonts in the book and an analysis of why I like or dislike them (apologies for some upside down, my scanner and software for said scanner don't like to turn things the right way round):

I like the one above by Mario Hugo because it's a subversion of a font assosciated with sport and the use of the 3 hand rendered lines has a nice aesthetic look to it, the way it generates the shoulders in s, p and r in particular look beautiful. I also chose it because the retro sports vibe might be appropriate to use in the Ferris Bueller ident, the film it's self has a vibe that seems akin to this font somehow.


I chose this nce simple font with a drop shadow because I though something similar would look good for the breakfast club, if it was all stop motion and shakey, then it would have a nice aesthetic to it. I think I'd make it a little less rounded though, the counters seem a little too spacious for my liking.


I loved the angular nature of this one, it seemed amost greek or like a stone carving, or perhaps representing electricity, I think a font similar to this might be appropriate for the weird science ident. The sort of playful electric nature of it seems to fit well. Obviously I'm going to try the font from the film poster first because it's almost iconic now, however this may be a good backup.

I thought the nice regal element and the almost floral flourishes in the serifs made this seem importand and almost an air of cutesy-nobility which might be appropriate for the general John Hughes ident, sort of suggesting he's 'teen-movie' nobility. I really like how intricate yet simple this is and would be really keen to produce something similar myself.

This one, I just liked, I also thought this could be used in the John Hughes section, or something similar, however I think it might be a bit aggressive and space consuming, it might be nice to try this in lower case, but such blocky bubble writing might be a bit OTT, I can try something similar and see how it looks though.

I chose the one above because it's reminiscent of what I'm trying in the image module, I just really like the aesthetic of the hair, I think it looks excellent, but then again that might just be because it's my default stylistic flourish.

I thought a font like this, almost script would work wonderfully for the 16 candles Ident because it's a feminine film and the font says to me cutesy female teen.