A little more wisdom...

This blog post could have come a bit sooner, but I have been submerged in school work for this post to finally make its appearance. After my final critique with Marty and my fellow designers I couldn't help but feel disappointed. More so with myself and the way I came about the final product. As Marty mentioned, I tend to let my frustrations get the best of me and allow myself to get stuck into one idea, this then leads to me settling with an idea or design that I am not 100% happy with. She noticed that this happened in our last typography assignment, particularly with my spreads. I was frustrated because I could not find a solution that I was happy with. Although it took me until the day before it was due to finally find a layout I was proud of, eventually, I did find a solution. This exact situation repeated itself while designing my final poster, but unlike the last project, I was not able to find that "aha!" moment (you know the moment that the minute you move a block of text two inches to the right and instantly you know you've made the right formal decision) before final critique.

After some time to think about this situation I realized that a moment of this exact kind of frustration has happened in every assignment. It happened in my mark making assignment with Jamie, where i was so frustrated that I could not see a thing other than what was in front of me. It took Jamie having to literally put a pen in my hand and open my sketch book to freshen up my approach. I mind mapped some more and it worked. I left my rut behind. Yes, this happened recently in viscom but it even happened all the way back when we were working on our dot book. I remember that I, at last minute, completely changed a typographic composition and it was a very good decision. It completely changed how it affected my book as a whole. Upon reflecting on this matter, it seems that if this is the way i operate, and this situation keeps repeating itself, then I need to work around it so that in future assignments I catch this frustration in time and can work through it on my own so that I can present a final product that I am proud of. A piece of information that I will apply to my work next semester.

Poster Iterations

As Marty and Jamie suggested, I added detail to the faces of the characters and kept the text at the bottom of the poster. I am not too excited at the idea of creating facial identities for the characters, mostly because my approach to this poster was that the characters were broken down to the bare minimum. This then leads the parent to creating a connection with the child by identifying these characters together.

I definitely see that the type looks best at the bottom of the poster. My thought behind creating a block of text is simply to play off of the grid-like form within the characters. 

Type Posters

Each of my posters is a very rough idea of the direction I would like to take them.  I felt like I kept dancing with the same ideas, so it was a bit of a challenge to keep a fresh take on each of my posters. 

 

This poster is completely about the type. My concept behind this poster was the quality of communication between parent and child. Many parents speak to their children in baby talk rather than speaking to them in an adult manner. This poster is meant to bring this to light as well as promote bedtime story time between parent and child.  

 

When approaching this poster, my intent was to bring a sense of nostalgia to the parent as well as catch the eye with abstracted iconic story book characters. I wanted to play with the idea of the parent creating a connection with the child over their favorite childhood story and sharing the knowledge of such a story.

 

With this poster, I compared the level of importance of literacy to the importance of food. The idea is to consider reading a daily intake of nourishment. 

Last Minute Revisions

After a bit of frustration with my layout, I gave it a makeover. I made drastic changes because I was not happy with my layout. I felt it was too unbalanced and just lacked visual interest. I have not completed all of my revisions, but below is the overall final composition of my spread. 

Before

 

After

Beautiful Spreads

Now the images below do not exactly have obvious grids on them and they do have a couple, but I HAD to post these because they are just too beautiful. 

 

Here's a 4 column spread that is also beautiful. 

Final Monogram

This is my monogram! Although the form appears to be very simple, the process was not. The problem that most often occurred was the actual act of combining the two letter forms. It was difficult to line up the edges of the strokes to each other. I had to go in with the pen tool and create a small layer on top of the form so that it appeared seamless.

The first draft of the monogram was done in Helvetica, but due to a very awkward moment on the interior edge on the left stroke, I switched my typeface to Futura. Futura's "n" is much more symmetrical, thus contributing to a more seamless integration of my two letter forms.

Typeface

The film, Typeface, was informative. It offered information on the art of wood type and how it is slowly dying. The film mainly focused on the identity of the Hamilton wood type museum and it's role on the lives of the people who worked there. This was one of my favorite elements of the film; a closer look at the lives of the people who are keeping such an art form alive.  At the same time, this is also what I found to be most depressing.  There are so many efforts and sacrifices made by so many people in attempt to keeping this art form from becoming extinct.  It left the question of "is it worth it?" lingering in my mind. Should we allow wood type become a part of the history that defines today's standards?

Initially, I thought this film was going to be about the history of typeface as a whole and how it is changing, a similar feeling to that of Helvetica.  At first, I responded negatively to the film because it was not what I was expecting, but in retrospect, and in accepting the film for what it was, I enjoy the ideas it brought to my attention. The film brought an element of concern, not only for the printing press, but for the effect it has on the people trying to keep it from drowning. And to answer the question of whether or not fighting for the life of wood type, I absolutely believe it's worth it.

Project Three

Above are my final digital compositions.  

Have fun at your conference, Marty!

My Four Words in Progress

Well, have been working on my bitmap font and the progress I am making so far is going well. I have Tightened the structure in my letter forms so that they are legible and sharper. The inspiration for my typeface came from the army men themselves. I wanted to make a typeface that alluded to a fortress of solid weight. By using the heavy structure at the bottom of each letter, I feel that I have reached my goal.

In my first draft for my four words I had scaling issues. My little army men were not all consistent in size, so I have gone back into my files and resized the army men so that they were all of equal size.  My "O's " in BAZOOKA previously looked like "A's" and it read as "BAZAAKA," so I absolutely went back to the drawing table and fixed the legibility of the "O's". (I don't have the digital file anymore, for I have accidentally saved over it, but I will scan it in so that you can see the difference between the two letter forms)

This is my very first draft. It reads "BAZAAKA". See?

  

In the word "grenade" I definitely had some issues with the consistency of the cap height, again due to scaling. I have gone in and refined the baseline of the letter forms so that it appears as if they are sitting on a solid foundation. 

 I am currently still working on this very wonky version of "Atomic Bomb" so I do not have a revised version, yet, but it is on its way. I have to Rescale most of these letter forms so that there is a better sense of cohesion within the letter forms. Also, i think I am going to redesign the lower case "o", simply because i feel there is a better visual solution than what is being presented here.

  

I have now updated my "Atomic Bomb" composition! It took a bit of time, but I am much happier with my compositions overall. On to the next step!

The Studio Culture Ya'll

In attempt to make a virtual studio culture, like Marty suggested, I am posting my aim screen name:

jeskarojas

Let's iChat, Section 2!

Bitmap Font

Sketches

Typeface 1

Typeface 2

Typeface 3