What is type as image?
- Illustration - Photography - Stitched - Handmade - Papercut - 3d - Digitally drawn - Found type - Type as part of image
- Needs to fit into context - Can have a message/humour behind it - Make things and photograph them in an environment - Consider impact - Could be interactive, such as people having to unfold - Type shown through light - Try different materials - How you photograph and record the work is important, as 3d things need to work in 2d
Brief
Select a quote from each of the given articles used in last weeks brief, and visually communicate them as type as image using only the text, and no additional images.
- How can you move beyond the obvious responses?
- What environment will your quote exist?
- No media restrictions
- The quote needs to exist in context
- All type used must be based on an existing typeface
- There is no limit to the min/max number of words used in a quote
- Each quote must be presented at A1 format
- It doesn't have to fit in to the middle of the sheet, experiment with how it sits in the frame
To be shown at the crit on Thursday 26th
Rationale
Brief: What is the problem you intend to solve?
I intend to create three A1 images featuring a quote from each of the guardian articles, communicated visually using only text.
Who needs to know?
My audience may be guardian readers, as the image could be used to accompany the article, or designers who are interested in type as image.
What do they need to know?
They need to be able to understand vaguely what the article is about, through the visual communication of just one quote.
Why do they need to know?
As the quote would seem pointless if it was just words, in no context.
What will they respond to?
The audience may want to read the whole article if they find the quote interesting with the way it is shown.
What research is required?
Secondary - To research existing typefaces, to find suitable ones for me to begin to work with
- To look at more examples of type as image to help inspire me and get me thinking
Choosing a quote
This was quite a difficult choice, as I want to create work that is subtle and clever, rather than the obvious. I believe I did this last week, with my response to the 'this column will change your life' article, so I want to continue to create responses that move beyond the obvious. I started out choosing quite big quotes from the text, but then I discovered this wasn't going to work as well, with the time given, so it was best to cut the quotes back. For each article, here are the quotes I was looking at before I had to narrow it down and make a decision:
1. Doctor Doctor -
"If you want to boost your immunity, the easiest way to do it is to exercise regularly."
- Could create an alphabet that looks like it is exercising
"As we grow"
- Could create the word as if it is growing
"If you want to boost your immunity, the easiest way to do it is to exercise regularly."
- Could create an alphabet that looks like it is exercising
"As we grow"
- Could create the word as if it is growing
2. Relationship Maths -
"The normal view you have of your partner is the back of their head and you have to go online to check their emotional status"
- Text made up of Facebook emoticons
"Your relationship will soon be over"
- Gloomy, doomed font choice
"You have hundreds and hundreds of online friends"
- Made up of squares of profile pics
"The normal view you have of your partner is the back of their head and you have to go online to check their emotional status"
- Text made up of Facebook emoticons
"Your relationship will soon be over"
- Gloomy, doomed font choice
"You have hundreds and hundreds of online friends"
- Made up of squares of profile pics
- Written in Facebook font
- Made up of Facebook icons
- Computer style text
- Screenshots of these words seen on Facebook
"Hundreds and hundreds"
- Made up of the word hundred written hundreds of times...
"Actually have real friends"
- Cut out of Facebook font, made up of photos of real people
- Made up of Facebook icons
- Computer style text
- Screenshots of these words seen on Facebook
"Hundreds and hundreds"
- Made up of the word hundred written hundreds of times...
"Actually have real friends"
- Cut out of Facebook font, made up of photos of real people
3. This column will change your life -
"Humans are terrible with big numbers."
- Photograph of person holding up letters made out of numbers (too complicated?)
- Letters made up of lots of numbers or of lots of the same letters
"There are probably millions of examples"
- Cut outs of different fonts examples of each letter
- Each letter a different font
- Each letter made out of lots of the same letter but in different fonts
"To the moon and back"
- Text made out of pound coins, written on an angle as if they are going to the moon and back
"People just name the price required to achieve the fuzzy feeling of having done their bit."
- The word fuzzy is literally fuzzy, and the word price is made up of money symbols
- Letters cut out of bank notes
Development of Ideas
1. Doctor Doctor -
For my exercising alphabet, I worked out I would need to create exercising image letters for these letters: a c e i g l r s u x y. I tried to create this alphabet by looking up different stretches, but I think it is not very easy to understand and the idea just wasn't working out how I thought it might. I also thought that my response to this quote was maybe a bit obvious, and I would rather choose a different quote and think about a cleverer answer.
I really like this idea, where I have brought life to each letter as a flower or a leaf or tree. I would like to try this out on photoshop, deciding on a font to base the letters on first.
For my exercising alphabet, I worked out I would need to create exercising image letters for these letters: a c e i g l r s u x y. I tried to create this alphabet by looking up different stretches, but I think it is not very easy to understand and the idea just wasn't working out how I thought it might. I also thought that my response to this quote was maybe a bit obvious, and I would rather choose a different quote and think about a cleverer answer.
I really like this idea, where I have brought life to each letter as a flower or a leaf or tree. I would like to try this out on photoshop, deciding on a font to base the letters on first.
I think this idea looks good and is really easy to understand. It is inspired by a library book I looked at [see blog post], where the letters of a name are arranged in a certain way to make the meaning of the name. The ideas in this book were really clever, and although this response might be quite simple, I think it will be good for me to continue developing this idea, as it is creating image using only existing type, rather than me illustrating the type.
When I created this idea on photoshop, it didn't look quite as good as my initial plans. This is because the final piece has to be portrait, where this idea is more suited to being landscape. I spent ages choosing a font that I thought represented the idea of growing and would look good, to stop the piece from being too simple. When I had then chosen a font, I experimented with altering the kerning, height, size and other type characteristics. I also had to choose a colour scheme, and I went with greens to relate to the nature theme.
I'm not sure this idea has quite worked, and I am going to go back and edit it when I have time, but for now I have put the development of this design on pause while I await feedback from the crit to help me improve. [See crit feedback]
2. Relationship Maths -
I have found this font on dafont.com, which is a bit like the Facebook font. I printed this out, and cut out the letters, to place over photographs as in my initial idea.
I have found this font on dafont.com, which is a bit like the Facebook font. I printed this out, and cut out the letters, to place over photographs as in my initial idea.
I experimented with working out which part of the letter I should cut out to make sure that the quote would be readable.
When I had finished this paper cut, I photographed it on top of a series of my photographs of me and my friends. However, these photographs were all 6x4, so it was really hard to place the paper cut in a way where I could actually see faces underneath. Also, the lighting in this photo shoot is really bad, so I knew that I had to re shoot these photographs.
To fix my problem of all the photographs being 6x4, I created an A4 collage of photographs to place behind the paper cut. Here, each image is about the size of one of the paper cut letters, meaning that faces will actually be able to be seen. I took a few photographs, and then edited them into one poster in photoshop.
3. This column will change your life -
This idea came to me straight away and was really easy and fun to work with. I did think about doing all the letters in the same overlapped style, but then I thought it would look too busy, so I stuck to just emphasising the millions as this is the key word in this quote. I played about with how I would arrange the text, and then starting overlaying lots of different fonts for each letter. I chose a colour scheme, and altered the opacity of each letter to let the colours come through. I'm really pleased with the result for this idea and am happy about how simple it was to make.
This idea came to me straight away and was really easy and fun to work with. I did think about doing all the letters in the same overlapped style, but then I thought it would look too busy, so I stuck to just emphasising the millions as this is the key word in this quote. I played about with how I would arrange the text, and then starting overlaying lots of different fonts for each letter. I chose a colour scheme, and altered the opacity of each letter to let the colours come through. I'm really pleased with the result for this idea and am happy about how simple it was to make.
