In this zine, I had a few concepts which I wanted to work on:

  1. The good and the bad of Political figures.
  2. Larger than life.
  3. Preserved buildings in Singapore.
  4. ‘Infographic’ on Wakeboarding.

Some initial sketches:

holytrump

A positive light on Trump..?

giant hermit crab 1

Larger than life hermit crab.

 

preserved building 2

Preserved peranakan buildings in Joo Chiat.

wakeboard shark 1

Wakeboarding like you’re Poseidon.

 

I ultimately decided to go with Wakeboarding, as I had a passion for the sport and I feel that not enough people know or have tried the sport. While I initially planned to create the zine in an infographic style, it morphed into an introductory booklet which served as an informative starter kit.

With that in mind, I chose my target audience to be the young crowds who walk around aimlessly in CCA booths in schools and universities, looking for a CCA that might interest them.


While it was no longer a 100% infographic zine any more, I still picked out relevant material in crafting one. Based on my research, infographics had to:

  • be eye-catching.
  • be easy for readers to engage in.
  • include more visuals and less text.This was important as the target audience I had in mind would have a limited attention span, and would probably move on if something didn’t catch their attention within the next 10 seconds or so.

 

ART DIRECTION

Given this knowledge, I attempted to steer my zine in those guiding concepts. In my earlier projects, I lacked a strong art direction, which caused my artworks to carry little cohesion. This time, I made sure to follow a particular artistic style, which was to be done via digitally drawing on photographs.

I studied some of David Carson’s typographic works to get a general idea of the types of font I would want to use. It was an added bonus that many of his works fused two of his passions: design and surfing. This made it easy to emulate some of his works onto mine. Other artists I studied include Joe Pytka (Director of Space Jam), Richard Williams (Director of Who framed Roger Rabbit) and Guila Pex.

After much contemplation, I also decided on a Landscape format as opposed to a more convential portrait-oriented zine, reason being the photographs I took while wakeboarding were more fitting of landscape formats.

Some initial cover pages:

cover page wakeboard

This cover had a plain coloured sky. I received feedback that a picture of a photographed sky could be used instead to maintain a strong thematic style.

cover page wakeboard newsky

Too many clouds in this one, so i took another photograph with fewer clouds and ultimately changed to a landscape orientation.

COVER AND BACK

Cover page

Cover. A much clearer sky. Saturation was increased to make the zine more bold and eye-catching.

zback cover

Back. Played with the concept of front and back (The back page shows the back of the cover picture.).

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS WAKEBOARDING?

Page 1

Starting off with a familiar sight: dictionary.com.  This hopefully provides a fun familiarity to the reader. Note the added definitions 2 & 3.

page 2

The major colour theme of this project is blue, given the subject of the water sport. Created my own font here to keep up the fun, quirky mood of this zine. (Thank God I didn’t use Comic Sans)

 

TRANSPARENCIES

Using acetate paper brought me a lot of fun working on this zine. What I had in mind was drawing cartoons on the acetate, such that it could interact with a photograph when placed over it. I then had the idea of placing the transparent sheet between two different figures, so that there was a concept of duality where the acetate could interact with both the left and the right pages.

This idea was worked upon as I wanted something to capture the attention of the reader more, so that he or she would be entertained enough to read more, instead of losing interest in plain text halfway. The use of acetate this way was easy to play with and added to the fun element of the zine.

WHAT IS WAKEBOARDING LIKE?

hero

Left Page.

wakehero

Right page. Low quality photograph because OSS has a max file upload size-.-

In these pages I chose to deviate from the blue colour theme as I wanted to evoke the mood of adrenaline, excitement and power. Besides, a stark colour change on a new page would add variation to the monotonous colours. In the context of the next page, I therefore chose green to be the main colour, so each section would come together to produce the RGB effect.

MYTHS AND FACTS

nessie

Used nessie to portray the idea of a myth.

(NOTE: In between the above and below pages is an additional transparency, where the sentence “Create your own scene here!” is written at a corner. While readers may not necessarily be inclined to do so, they are nonetheless prompted to get creative and be more observant of the scene that can be viewed when one is wakeboarding, to give a better idea of how wakeboarding feels like.)

nessiephoto

Refer to bottom of post for better quality photographs.

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

sharkie

Back to a blue theme.

wakeshark

Refer to bottom of post for better quality pictures.

 

FINAL WORDS

Page 12

 

Choice of paper:

Fabric paper for the covers provided a nice texture, and complimented the whole surf n’ sweat vibe. The rest (apart from the acetate) were printed on semi-gloss 190gsm paper (not too thick for the acetate alignment).

I had initially wanted to print the whole zine using the transparent acetate such that the zine is completely waterproof and I could present it in a clear rectangular container while tied to a string, just like a wakeboarder. However, the acetate pages would stick together when wet, and the zine would be very difficult to bind due to the resistivity of acetate.

 

Nonetheless, I am satisfied with the way my zine turned out:)

 

wakehero w cape copymyth2 wakeshark2

Presented Video:


 

Final Cut:


 

The following pdf was sent to each interviewee prior to the interview:

Interviewee Brief

 

Following that, these are some of the generic questions, some of which were tweaked to better suit the individual interviewees,
posed to each of them:

Introduce yourself. (who are you, what do you do? Tell me a little about your family.)

How old do you think you can be?

What would happen to XXX when you are no longer around?

Do you have any regrets?

What do you aspire for your next gen? (Hopes and dreams)

What will your plans be for them?

How would you want to be remembered?

What is one memory you have of XXX that you will always remember?

What is one value you want XXX to have, or to learn?

How much do you love your family?

Anything to say to XXX if he/she is here?

 


 

And finally a small preview of the studio setting which was used:

studio

 

 

The End

 

This project was a highly experimental phase for me. I wanted to try my hand at various styles to see which would be best suited to my tastes. While this resulted in a very uncoordinated overall effect of the entire composition, I felt that I learnt a lot through this experience, and would like to thank everyone for their valued constructive feedback, both compliments and criticisms.

In this project, my chosen perspective was that of The Internet, and by implication, all things with online requirements. I had to be careful not to confuse what was simply technological/digital/computerised with the actual connectivity that the internet provides. (E.g; Microsoft word has, in this case, nothing to do with the internet.)

 

Here are some initial sketches for conceptualisation:

IMG_2001 IMG_2008IMG_1996IMG_1997

 


 

Drawing out the final works…

While each piece possessed very contrasting art directions, I attempted to create some similarities among them to portray the fact that they are all part of one project.

IMG_1999

These are some thematic adherences I considered in the completion of these compositions:

PERSONIFICATION OF THE INTERNET

First off, I personified the internet as a woman always donning an @ hair bun, as seen in the character design stage sketches. For convenience, I will call her Internet Girl in this post.

USE OF COLOUR

Said internet chick is always surrounded by a rainbow background or wearing rainbow-coloured outfits. I chose this multicolour feature as I felt it was the most relatable to the internet, which had anything and everything in it, and possessed such a myriad of content, accessibility and utilisation.

CONCENTRATION THROUGH CIRCULATION

Somewhat similar to how a school teacher would encircle things with a red pen, I engaged the use of a large single circle/sphere in each piece, to subtly centralise the focus on the personified internet figure. This was enhanced by keeping the background to minimum detail, if any at all.

Furthermore, circles represent connectivity, which is a huge, if not the main role of the internet.

NEUTRAL BACKGROUND TONES

While initially I had wanted to portray 2 sides of the internet (good and evil) via the colours red and blue, the digital drawings in each piece became much less defined, as these colours are very strong hues. I therefore decided to literally tone it down by using only whites and earth colours for the backgrounds.


 

  1. The Internet to a BLIND DATE is REVELATIONS.

BLIND DATE

Concept: To depict a cupid attempt gone wrong via a dating app called ‘Tinder’, in a church-like gothic style fragmented glass painting.

This idea came about when a friend of mine (no, this isn’t a personal story which I try to mask using ‘a friend of mine’, i promise) was really into a girl whom he met online, but who he eventually met in person turned out a lot er, larger than life, if you get my drift. I’m not sure if there were any regrets, but it definitely was not a match he had been expecting.

Anyway, I wanted to capture the shock of experiencing such a revelation, so I chose to present this in the form of a man impersonating a woman to exaggerate things a little bit.

The angel (cupid) has a halo which I cut out from the Internet Explorer logo, as well as a flame burning above her head, an exact replica of the Tinder app.

Reflections: I felt my illustrations could do with a little improvement, as well as the sensitivity to lighting directions. Overall, the most important takeaway for me in this piece was that it was a little too cluttered, with so many things going on in a single A5 piece. This piece taught me to be more aware of the dimensions I was working with.

 

2. The Internet to a RESEARCH ESSAY is WIKIPEDIA UNCITED.

wikipedia the forbidden fruit FINAL

Concept: To convey the shared opinion that undergrads have when working on research essays, executed in a satirical manner.

This is my most preferred composition of this project. From this, I decided that should I have chosen to stick to one style of execution for this project, it would be this one.

Stencil art is usually used by graffiti artists with strong opinions, and their works on various walls usually convey satirical messages of varying degrees. One of my references for this piece is the famed artist Banksy.

I chose to depict the wikipedia logo as a ‘forbidden fruit’ that students all want to use but are not allowed to, delicious as it may look, aggravated further by Internet Girl offering a piece to you.

This piece was executed in the same way as one of last semester’s project (see Project on Nursery Rhymes), by manipulating adjustment levels in Photoshop. I also changed the brush mode to ‘Dissolve’ to give the spray paint effect, and used the smudge tool a little for the dripping paint streaks. Finally, I placed a wall layer above the art and changed the blend mode to ‘Multiply’ to make the graffiti look more realistic.

Reflections: I learned how to create stencil-like art digitally from attempting this piece. I found that I was rather interested in this style of artwork as well.

 

3. The Internet to an ADOLESCENT is FREE & INSTANT GRATIFICATION.

INSTANT GRATIFICATIONConcept: Creating a simple, straightforward image that coincides with the idea of porn without depicting outright pornographic material.

When I first thought about how to go about working on this piece, I thought of the famous incognito mode that many male teens were all too familiar with, especially if they did not own their own computers/laptops.

I chose to manipulate Google Chrome’s ‘incognito mode’ logo as it was a rather accurate and unpretentious representation of the potential uses of incognito mode. By this I mean a suspicious looking character get-up, with a classic private investigator/swindler appearance.

Illustration-wise, I decided to depict Internet Girl as a retro pin-up girl, as they tend to be associated with the idea of beauty and sultriness.

As pointed out to me during the presentation, I unknowingly connected the image to the Japanese flag, which provided a convenient relation to the huge Japanese porn industry. The main reason i chose red for the background circle was because red represents passion, desire, heat, longing, lust, sexuality, sensitivity, romance and action. Red also provides a good contrast to the black and white incognito logo.

Reflections: Pin-up girls take a very long time to draw and render (at least for myself). Point to remember when completing tasks with a limited timeframe.  Also, it is worth being more sensitive to what connotations your final art can hold, as in the case of the Japanese flag reference, accidents might not always be to your advantage in conveying your intentions.

4. The Internet to a HYPOCHONDRIAC is HIS OWN DOCTOR.HYPOCHONDRIAC copy copy

Concept: Following the style and orientation of ‘someecards’, which are witty and lighthearted.

bracketology

An example of satirical but not-so-serious someecards.

I wanted to manifest the template of the popular online e cards, ‘someecards’, as they were mostly clean and amusing. They are rather similar to the style and effect of stencil ‘graffiti’ art. While also offering alot of opinion, these cards tend to be less serious and weighted, and sometimes more amusing in a lighthearted manner. They also address easier and less political issues.

WebMD is (arguably) one of the most comprehensive and visited health/medical sites on the internet, so i made Internet Girl be a spokesperson for the well-known organisation. Google Chrome is (also arguably) one of the most popular web browsers around, and it helped that its simple, circular logo fit well into a stethoscope.

Reflections: With so much text going on in this piece, it was worth noting that the typographic technique of kerning and tracking should have been executed more here, to allow reading of the text to be more breathable and inviting to the eye.

 

5. The Internet to TREES is A CHANCE FOR SURVIVAL.
TREES A CHANCE FOR SURVIVAL

Concept: To portray Internet Girl as a joyful, natural and innocent looking person where the branches that pass beyond her bear fruit.

I attempted to use analogous colours for the background to display a sense of calm and serenity, so i gave the water a greenish tinge to compliment the yellow sun-washed sky. I also made the colour saturation of the background seem to emanate from Internet Girl to make her look slightly divine. By giving her simple clothing and a hawaiian-themed skirt, I had the intention of giving her a more environmentally friendly appearance.

The ‘fruits’ that the tree grows beyond Internet Girl are all paper-saving software, which provide direct alternatives to paper and can all be disseminated online to prevent mass-printing.

Reflections: To make the composition look more natural, and aesthetically cohesive, the software logos could be hand-drawn instead of using the real deal.

6. The Internet to THE GOVERNMENT is GREATER CONTROL.
ERP NEW

Concept: Using 50/60s advertising templates to advocate the good in the new ERP system.

A public outcry among Singaporean netizens emerged when the government introduced the new Global Navigation Satellite System to operate the already frowned-upon ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) gantries. However, from a governmental standpoint, it was a more accurate form of pricing and thus was perceived by them as something positive.

The 50’60s advert posters didn’t always carry accurate statements, and were always so one-sided that they became pretty questionable. Faces were never unhappy and products were always perfect.

luckystrikes

speechless.

beatyourwife

Emma Watson would not have had survived in that era.

I blended in an old paper texture to emulate the 50s advert printouts, while also trying to maintain the style of said advertisements. I also tried to form the quotes in an extremely sarcastic manner.

Reflections: Replicating the 50s style of advertising art proved much more difficult than I had imagined. This is one such case where the idea formulated much better than the execution. The old paper also made the composition messier. Probably one thing i thought I did right was the choice of adding in red and yellow as the main colours of this piece, as it helped to give a more vintage look.

 


 

INITIAL EXPERIMENTATIONS


HYPOCHONDRIAC HYPOCHONDRIACosschance for trees 2 chance for trees trees 2nd Trees a chance for survivalinternet datingERPwikipedia the forbidden fruit oss1 copy wikipedia the forbidden fruit 2 wikipedia the forbidden fruit

To be honest, this project started out as almost ridiculous to me. “Hello, my name is blah and I am blah.” I was cynical about this kindergartener’s art homework. I guess this is why I still am in school, because boy, did I have much to learn.

Sure, even a 4 year old could do this project, but as I researched on various typefaces and fonts, I realised how much sophistication and depth this project called for. By working on this project, I learned to really appreciate the art of typography and all the meaning and connotations it can carry, simply through different representations of words.


I decided to present these 5 compositions as they represent things that affect me very considerably, or have made a lasting impact.

Please click the link here to view all the final images (not in order for some reason) in higher resolution:

-Hello I am project 1.compressed

IMG_1684

Front cover: featuring my signature and all the supportive feedback I received via post-its:)

In the presentation, I chose to display my works in a flip-book format. This was simply to allow each work to stand on its own, as they are meant to be viewed individually and I wouldn’t want them to have to fight for attention. It becomes more crucial given the fact that each piece was intentionally made simple; viewing them individually would then become more visually powerful. There is also the added bonus of it being able to stand like a desk calendar, which was a nice aesthetic.


Screen Shot 2016-02-20 at 3.32.50 amThis was the first piece I decided to present. Personally, I liked this one the most as I found it to be simple and clean, yet evoking a strong message. I hope I would be able to improve in such works in the future.

I would say that I used the idea of appropriation to create this piece. The design of my name here is a take on the very common household brand, Durex. Initially I wanted to make it more similar by creating the letter ‘b’ in my name to look like how durex portrayed their letter x, which extended to the border. However, after several attempts, I figured that it looked better the way it was, and that the whole durex thing going on was already similar enough for people to get it.

Just in case it wasn’t clear enough, I decided to replace the letter ‘o’ to an actual condom. I then gave the inner part of the condom a tinge of blue in Photoshop to make it seem realistically translucent in front of the blue background.

Initially, this piece did not include the crayon drawing of a suffocated boy. I thought that the idea of a condom was evident enough to give the message that I did not like kids, or wanted one now for that matter. Obviously I thought wrong, as many individuals claimed that I was trying to portray something provocative and nothing else. I’m glad consultations went the way it did, as I received a great deal of constructive feedback from my peers (thanks guys) and my prof (thanks Joy) to give my audience a stronger direction towards my intended message.

I chose orange to depict the crayon kid as firstly, it was a good contrast to the blue branding, and secondly, it was a friendlier colour as opposed to red, which was important when trying to depict something that related more to a child.

The encircled ‘R’ was a clear but subtle hint to show that this was taken after a brand (another reason highlighting the importance of consultations).


FullSizeRender 5

This piece is sort of a cry of misery. Being allergic to dust, in my opinion, is one of the worst things you can wish on anyone. On average, I sneeze off about 2 days in a week, because of my very sensitive nose. My eyes water, I get headaches, and I’m always stuck in the moment just before a sneeze. You can imagine how that can greatly affect productivity. If the room is dusty, I would wake up several times to sneeze and have to (attempt to) clear my nose. Tissue papers would be my best friend, and my enemy when it comes to the point where the skin around my nose gets really dry and red after all that wiping. You can see how I would be very vocal about this affliction to choose it as one of my works.

Anyway, enough of garnering pity points. I decided to create artificial dust using felt, with graphite grazed all over it to simulate the colour of dust, and then pulling at the felt to give the texture of dust bunnies. I then cut my name out from the felt (note to self: felt is pretty resistant to pen-knives), modelled a nose from plasticine and stuck a wad of tissue in a nostril.

rsz_img_1626

pulling at the felt to give it the dust bunny texture

IMG_1638

the cut out letters (and nose)

IMG_1651

using a toothpick to dig out nostrils for the nose was a rather awkward experience.

rsz_img_1635

Putting it all together and stuffing a wad of tissue in, before digital editing.

While I felt (haha) that this composition would fare better as a 3d piece because of the dusty texture and the tissue dangling from the nose, I decided to keep it 2D in order to fit it into my method of presentation. The advantage of keeping it 2D was that I could paint the nose digitally, and increase the highlights and contrasts of the dusty background so that the letters would appear more clearly and the higher contrasts would make everything more visually appealing. I also gave the tissue a slightly blue colour to have it stand out from the black and white background.


FullSizeRender 4

This next piece is like a visual ode to the now outdated Microsoft word on windows 95-98. I’m sure many of us in this era would be very familiar to this font: Times New Roman. I enjoyed using this font. It made me feel like I was a newspaper editor back when I was in Primary school. Whether anyone shares this sentiment with me or not, I believe that everyone who used Microsoft word then would recognize this soon-to-be forgotten font, the Calibri (Body) of the 90s.

I first screenshot my name typed out on Microsoft word, making sure the timing was right to capture the blinking | (< no idea what it’s called) as well. It was important to create the effect of what one would see when he or she was typing away on Microsoft word. I then photoshopped in the cursor one would see on Microsoft word. Funny thing about this. On a MacBook when you do a screen capture, the cursor disappears entirely, hence the need to photoshop it in. Small issue, but I like to think how only last year, before I learned how to use Photoshop, this would have posed a real problem to me!

As a nice touch, I then added in Mr. Clippy, the unhelpful paperclip. Good to see he got phased out, but still an icon of nostalgia nonetheless. Finally, as a finishing touch, I added a ‘screen’ to overlay the whole image. This screen was not easy to make, and luckily I found a tutorial online which showed exactly how to do it. The screen serves to be reminiscent of the old convex screens that those blocky computers had in the past.


Screen Shot 2016-02-20 at 3.33.37 am

This composition is a little bold, even for my standards. I initally wanted to caption this as “…and I am unnecessarily childish.”. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been entirely inaccurate to label it as such. However, it was how I strongly felt about modern art these days. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate all modern artworks, just those that I find not deserving of the credit they receive. Maybe I’m just jealous, and I probably am, but I simply cannot fathom how a friggin red square painted on a huge canvas can be worth almost $2 million. I mean, whatever happened to the likes of Raphael and Da Vinci?

I prepared a little game where I asked my audience which work of art was worth millions of dollars, and which one took me just 3 minutes to photoshop in the morning without any thought.

Every piece is worth millions of dollars save one

Every piece is worth millions of dollars save one.

This small exercise was not to belittle my peers, who most, if not all of them are far more intelligent and creative than I am. I simply wanted to prove my point that these works of modern art are simply not worth their priced value, at least in my opinion. Sure, they may carry some deep meaning, but so do many other art works that look like they have some skill or effort included in it as well.

As a result, I decided to make a parody of Piet Mondrian’s work, not because I particularly dislike him, but because he was one of the more notable modern artists that I have come across time and again. I do not have anything against the artists themselves, though I definitely do not share their sentiments in artistic perspective. The final outcome serves as a message for the direction that modern art is heading towards.

Maybe in time, I will come to learn and understand the rich meaning of such works of abstract art, but until then, I won’t be in the least bit inclined to pay and see them in museums.


Screen Shot 2016-02-20 at 3.33.23 am

While this piece was initially one of the final 4 compositions, it became a bonus piece as I realised that I might be straying from the objective of converting one’s name to a typographic art work. This piece is a wordy collage of various descriptions that make me, such that when compiled together they create a typographic self portrait. I decided to add this as a bonus piece anyway because I felt it was a nice summary to my presentation where I end with “…and I am Jacob.” It just felt like an appropriate ‘closure’.


 

Rejected works:

 

Jacob mahjong 1 copy

“…and I am a mahjong addict.” Tried to force my name out of the tiles that make up the “Thirteen Wonders”. You can see here that I failed very miserably indeed.

jacob mahjong 2

“…and I am a mahjong addict.” once again. This was a more successful attempt, and I really like it (you can tell I do because I made it the featured image for this post haha), but many of my friends couldn’t tell that it was an attempt to spell my name. I also didn’t want to digitally manipulate the tiles because I felt that it wouldn’t be a creative enough method to carry out this project.

typography i screwed up

“…and I screwed up.”. This piece just felt like it needed more. That, and the caption doesn’t give off a very strong message.


 

Hindsight:

I found that those works that I have chosen to include more sensitive imagery caught the attention of many during the presentation, to the extent that it dulled out other pieces of my work.

All that being said, I feel that using things that are more ‘taboo’ in nature in art, such as expletives or sexually related objects seem to attract more attention, but at the same time it should not be used solely for that purpose in my opinion, but serve to enforce the intended message of the artist. I hope I have utilized my works in this manner and did not stray too far in simply using them for cheap shock value.

This project was a fun one to work on: We had to spell our names out with a relation to whatever it is we decided to describe ourselves with.

The premise of this project gave me many ideas I wanted to work on.

 

After consultations, I was given an important piece of advice, which was to create a theme, or a collective mood, of the series of typographic compositions I was to create.

I decided to go with the idea of being simple, yet witty.

 

As such, these are the captions I decided to work on:

  1. I am allergic to dust.
  2. I was born during the dawn of the computer age.
  3. I find kids annoying.
  4. I am Jacob.

 

“I am allergic to dust.”

For this composition, I will attempt to create my name with a runny nose; said nose will represent the letter ‘A’ in my name. The nose will be made from clay. To make things more relevant, I will place a layer of grey ‘dust’ (probably felt wool) as the background of this composition. To keep things 2D, I will take a photo of the final piece to print out. I am hoping this will turn out well during the presentation.

 

“I was born during the computer age.”

I felt that this piece should represent the thing that we 90s kids would be very familiar with. Therefore, I chose to emulate the past Microsoft word document font. Back then, Times New Roman was the default font, and was also the most accepted font in school.

Screen Shot 2016-02-02 at 11.25.11 pm

This small but important Microsoft word cursor was added as well.Screen Shot 2016-02-02 at 11.24.52 pm

After consultations, however, I was inspired to push the already familiar text a step further. I took the advice of adding an old school ‘screen’ effect to the composition.

Examples:

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 5.19.01 am

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 5.18.24 am

Notice the hazy, faint RGB blanket that new flat-screen laptops today do not produce.

 

This was actually pretty fun to do as the process, though long, turned out fruitful. Here are some process shots:

Screen Shot 2016-02-11 at 9.46.19 pmScreen Shot 2016-02-11 at 10.27.13 pmScreen Shot 2016-02-11 at 10.28.09 pm

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 4.32.22 am

Looks really complicated, and it is! Thankfully the online guide was very easy to follow:)

 

The tutorial for this effect can be found online here:

http://layersmagazine.com/simulating-a-computer-screen-in-adobe-photoshop.html

And finally, the icing on the cake:

clippy

Clippy, the nostalgic paperclip. I personally never really liked him.

I remember how he was always there to aid, but was never really much help. #Aforeffort

 

“I find kids annoying.”

To tackle this piece, I decided to tackle to root cause of the problem. We all know what causes kids, and we all know the preventive measures. So I decided to do a little research on a particular household brand.

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 8.56.21 amScreen Shot 2016-02-12 at 8.57.16 am

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 8.57.46 am

Their ads were so witty and entertaining that I almost got carried away with my research.

Subtle as it was, the logo itself was distinguishable enough. There was little I had to do for others to see the relation in this, even without the product replacing the letter ‘O’ in my name:

Typography i find kids annoying

Again, I was encouraged to push this even further, by including the Ⓡ symbol in this piece.

Wiki time:

“The enclosed R or circled Latin R (Ⓡ or ⓡ) is a typographical symbol. As one of many enclosed alphanumerics, the symbol is an “R” within a circle. Its most notable usage is as the registered trademark symbol.”

However I was told, with good reason, that I may not be sending the message I intend to, which was that I do not want kids (at least not now). I had to include something to show my audience that message.

This led me to download some Photoshop crayon brush presets:) There’s something about kids being almost synonymous to whimsical crayon doodles, and I hope I can use this to bring forth the right message this time.

crayon doodle kids

cute, but also kinda creepy.

 

“I am Jacob.”

For this final piece, I wanted to do a reversal of the project. Instead of introducing my name first in the typographic artwork, I decided to introduce the adjectives and things that make me into the composition, and end it off with my name as the caption.  Since there were so many things I wanted to include in this piece, I decided to employ the concept of a typographic portrait.

Some super cool examples:

typortrait batman typortrait heisenberg

 

Portraits like these are fairly common. However, I felt that since this was a multiple item project, I wanted to give the whole thing a bit of a narrative, where this wraps everything up on a nice note. After all, pictures of one’s self comes to mind when one says “This is me.”.

Some process shots:

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 9.31.11 am

gaussian blur because i’m not a selfie kinda guy lol

Screen Shot 2016-02-12 at 9.28.47 amScreen Shot 2016-02-12 at 9.29.42 amScreen Shot 2016-02-12 at 9.35.03 am

 

 

Music: La Vie En Rose by Edith Piaf

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aaanndd.. another attempt (a very different take) of a one-take:)

(I chose not to showcase this one because I felt that it didn’t really capture the essence of a one-take film, and the potential emotions that could be brought out through a one-take. However, there was so much effort put into this that I feel it should be worth putting up as well!)