Month: October 2017

Project 2: Final design

I added more branches laterally across the composition to integrate the text and the art. I chose Gill Sans as it was a san serif type, and was less rigid and formal than the other typefaces that I experimented with. I extended the clouds to the edges, with butterflies near the periphery of the poster. Overall, I think the composition is well balanced after a few rounds of editing. The text integrates well with the art and the overall feel of the poster is serene, yet with an element of excitement and unexpected fun.

Project 2: Research and Development II

I started off this project with a few moodboards based on a few different themes. I wanted to deviate from the common portrayal of arts in posters, with an element of storytelling.

Moodboard 1: art and music

Moodboard 2: enjoyment

Moodboard 3: fairytale


Thereafter, I came up with drafts of all 3 ideas based on the mindmap i created

Enjoyment
Arts and music

Fairytale
The first draft was too immature, and the visual narrative was quite misleading; is Jack climbing the beanstalk to visit the hospital? Or is he painting a heaven? With these questions in mind, I then decided to create a cleaner composition.

I decided on the fairytale as a theme for my poster. Using Jack and the Beanstalk as a reference point, I used illustration to portray the idea of “creating your own adventure”, with the patient or volunteer identifying with the character Jack painting a mural that comes alive, filled with passion and immersing himself into the environment of the hospital.

 

This is the composition before I added in colour. I felt that there was a flow to the image, with the overlapping forms and the visual narrative. The font I initially chose was Bebas Neue, but I eventually realised it was too geometric for a fun composition.

 

This was draft 1 of the poster. (the colour is a bit off after uploading jpeg to OSS) The feedback I got was that the background was a bit too dull. I decided to explore more exciting colours for the background. I decided to stick to the current narrative as I liked the idea of the squirrel having been painted by Jack, decides to give back in love. In terms of the composition, the type also does not meld well with the art, which was something to consider. The type was too big and rather distracting. Again, the serif fonts felt too formal for the informal design.

Assignment 3: process and final

Task 1: Type as Image

Font: I decided to use experiment with Rockwell and Lucida Grande as they were serif and sans serif fonts respectively and I wanted to test the contrast between both fonts.

Final image 1:

I started off by burning the edges of the paper, before the lower right leg of the A came right off. It looked good contrasting the organic forms with the rigid serifs of the letterform. I also played with inverse and it had an old school charm about it, almost similar to American Horror Story.

 

 

 

 

Next, I threaded strips of  X through each other, creating a crochet effect. It didn’t look as good in inverse as A.

 

 

Final image 2:

On top of the above 2 manipulations, I also cut Q into close strips, creating a feathery effect. Although a lot of people liked this design during consultation, I felt that the A was still better because it could invoke a feel from a different era. The T was cut vertically before cutting off segments of the stem and reorganising them together.

There was also the simple manipulation where I folded a piece of paper in half, and inversed the image. That looks possibly like a logo.

I also played with close-ups of type, namely Rockwell. These experimentations produced some beautiful abstract forms.


Task 2: Type as patterns

Font: I chose Giddyup as I liked its playful spirit, with its twirling tails and thin squiggly strokes.

Final pattern 1:

I made this pattern out of the letter Q, rotating it and creating a clover shaped pattern.

Final pattern 2:

I made this pattern out of the letter S, layering over a black background and working with greys. I created an alternate pattern of grey and darker grey to give the pattern a sense of depth.

I also experimented with Didot, making this HDB-like pattern made up of Hs.

 

 

 

 

 

This series of mask-like patterns were made out of Museo 700 Fs.

I also played with Futura Cs, tiling them up and playing with scale.


Task 3: Type as emotions

Font: I chose Futura as it was quite a versatile font yet not as ubiquitous as Helvetica. I used Regular and Bold in my compositions.

Final image 1: Confused

I stacked the different letters atop each other in a haphazard way, similar to the way a confused person thinks; with logic jumbled up and lacking any coherence. The negative space between the letterforms also adds interest.

Final image 2: Arrogant

I wanted to represent the way a character is larger than life, having excessive confidence, even referring to himself in third person. Its an overbearing presence that could easily be seen as arrogance.

Final image 3: Depressed

I wanted to portray the image of someone jumping off a building, or doing that mentally. Depression often entails “falling into the depths of despair”. In this image, shrouded in the darkness, the last vestiges of hope are extinguished, with the o barely visible, almost like a life extinguished.

Final image 4: Friendly

This was a fairly simple concept. I used italics for this emotion as it mirrors speaking breezily and in a lighthearted tone. The arc of words resemble a wave, as though the ‘hello’ is beckoning to a friend.

I also explored other variations which were hit and misses.