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Project 2B on the other hand had us exploring freeform type. Sounds fun but at the same time a little daunting… Similarly, we had to think of a phrase/quote/memory/lyric and create our very own organic typeface in relation to the quote and we could only use traditional medium. After creating the type, we have to apply it onto something tangible.

PROCESS
WEEK 2: In-Class Experimentation

The following week after getting our assignment brief we did some in-class typeface exploration with a wide range of materials we brought from home and found in class to create our typeface. Ideally, we had to come to class with a quote in mind so that we could start exploring and creating a typeface that suited our chosen quote. However I was still undecided (just like Project 2A, my ideas just refused to come easily…) so it was really just freestyle exploration for me that week. I experimented with ink, creating thick and thin strokes with a brush/felt marker, blocking letters, writing in cursive etc. and below were some of the outcomes:

While exploring, a quote ‘Take Heart, Be Kind’ suddenly came to mind. It is more of a catchphrase that was used by the host of a YouTube series that I’ve been following. As I wanted to go for a “spread positive vibes” kind of feel I was thinking that this could be a possible quote to use.

However after exploring with various original typefaces for the quote I realised that it was hard to create one that exudes a “positive vibes” feel. Possibly by playing with colours, but I felt that the shape of letters of the typeface had to play a part the sense that for instance: If the type had to be created in black and white, the vibe of the quote should still be visible too. Also, I did not help that the typefaces from the experimenting was all leaning towards the now commonly seen calligraphy look. It did not come off unique:

WEEK 3&4: Slowly Getting There…

Thus I gave up on that quote and went online to search for more. Another challenge faced was that we had to limit our quote/phrase between 15 to 25 characters. I was still leaning towards to the idea of creating an organic typeface for inspiring quotes and I kind of wanted to play with the idea of incorporating flowers since it was my kind of ‘thing’/aesthetic.

By chance, the quote ‘No Rain, No Flowers’ came up and I felt it was a really simple yet powerful quote that I think everyone would resonate well with, even myself. I feel it speaks of how everything is cause and effect and life’s not all rainbows and butterflies, just like the flowers, we will definitely experience the “rain” – the bad days in order to grow as a person. And they key to overcoming these ups and downs is to embrace it. It felt meaningful. Additionally, I realised that I could incorporate flowers in the organic typeface too 🙂 Here were some of the works I found online and got inspired by / referenced a little:

I then proceeded to experiment on the typeface for this quote at home and came up with a few ideas:

Then came the problem, I could not seem to execute my idea of having the flowers line the sides of the letter while retaining the visibility of the letters (as seen in the image below). The flowers seem to overpower the letter instead of my intention of having it complement the typeface in the sense that it subtly depicts the meaning of the quote as well of how without rain there would be no flowers, the flowers will not bloom. I wanted the letters in the organic dripping-looking form to stand out more than the flowers reason being that it is the rain is the cause of the flowers. It allowed the flowers to grow.

Brought my experimentations to class for the following week of consultation to see how I could tackle this problem and the suggestions given by my peers were really helpful!! They suggested that I could perhaps melt wax crayons / use the glue gun to create give the letters more dimension so that it stands out from the flowers. As for the flowers, I could perhaps do paper folding or another technique I thought of – paper quilling.

WEEK 5: It’s Finally a Work-In-Progress!!

Now that my final execution direction was clearer, I went into creating the typeface based on the suggestions received that week. For the letters, I tried out the Glue Gun method eventually as I already had the materials at home but unfortunately it failed to create the depth and I did not like the uneven texture it created as I had to layer the glue over and over again because of its little output each time.

Managed to resolve the problem by using some leftover styrofoam I had at home from past projects (perks of being a hoarder after each art project haha)

And it worked!!! YESSS. As for the flowers to surround the typeface… due to the little time I had left to work on the typeface, realistically it was not possible to continue with my initial technique of folding /paper quilling the flowers as both techniques required quite a bit of time and cost of course.

Hence I went with the idea of using of fake flowers instead. It was a much cheaper and faster alternative too!! I got them from Daiso and boy their selection of flowers was huge! I was initially at a loss to which kinds of flowers I should choose, which would actually complement the typeface. I eventually went with a vibrant mix of flowers since anything colourful doesn’t hurt right!! Especially since the letters were white in colour.

Here’s how the typeface turned out:

Look of the typeface before digitalising

Thanks to the styrofoam that created the dimension for the letters, the flowers were able to be placed around its sides without overpowering it as initially if both letter and flowers were on the same level, the flowers would definitely have stood out (as seen earlier).

As another requirement of the project was to have the typeface applied onto something tangible, I had to have the typeface digitalised in order for that to happen. Scanning was not an option for me as the typeface had dimension. It was not fully flat and some details of the typeface would have been lost. I did try to scan though! But as anticipated, some details were lost. Thus, I had to take pictures of the letters individually against a black sheet of paper/background and then manually photoshop erase the background of each letter and rearrange them on a blank canvas thereafter. Individual letters reason being that I had to create large letters of the typeface in order for the flowers to surround each letter nicely without looking too crammed or sparse.

The editing process after shooting the letters individually:
It was a rather strenuous process of zooming in, removing the black areas bit by bit and arranging them thereafter on a blank black canvas to achieve a clean finished typeface. And voilà!

APPLICATION TIME!

As mentioned, part two of the assignment was to have this typeface be applied onto something tangible and I came up with a few ideas! It being kind of like an inspiration quote, the options were endless. Here were some ideas but I eventually went with the poster 🙂

Tote Bag Design

 

Notebook Design

 

Poster (Final Selected)

 

So glad the ideas finally came through! Being a person who really enjoys doing craftwork, creating the typeface was an extremely fun process and I would love to try my hands at such a project again in the future!!

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For Project 2A we’re tasked to head down to a favourite area of ours and create a typographic composition that reflects the spirit of the chosen area. The typographic composition should be a phrase, quote, memory or lyric that we would associate with the area. When I first heard about it and when examples were shown to us in class, it looked like a lot of fun! Especially if we took up the challenge to identify letters of our selected quote through the structures, objects, almost about anything and everything that can be found at the place to capture it’s essence instead of just looking out for found letters on signs.

RESEARCH & IDEATION

The following week after getting the assignment brief, we dived into our first week of consultations for the assignment together with Project 2B which I will share more about in a separate post so as not to confuse.

Back to Project 2A here, I went in still unsure about my choice of place and the quote to resonate/capture the essence of it for the assignment on the day of consultations but somehow after the consult with Shirley, I managed to lock down my idea!  I was deciding between two places and it was funny how they suddenly came to mind – Botanic Gardens and Haw Par Villa.

Botanic Gardens reason being how I really like the flora and fauna there, the quiet yet scenic view I get every time I am there; healing. On the other hand Haw Par Villa, a place that I have never been to but heard so much about as it is known for featuring giant dioramas of the Chinese folklore, mythology, history and more. The theme park used to be bustling with visitors in the past but have now resided to a quiet place of visit in Singapore. It’s most famous attraction would probably be the 10 Courts of Hell which features gruesome depictions of Hell in Chinese mythology and Buddhism for various kinds of sins committed by people, how they would get punished for it.  I guess the colourful dioramas and mystical vibe of the place overall was what eventually led me to deciding on this place for my project.

The quote I had for the typographic composition of this place was largely inspired by it’s famous attraction (stated earlier) and also because growing up, my parents and grandparents would occasionally share with me stories of these mythologies so I already had vague ideas of it prior to visiting and researching. Especially when we were much younger, they would scare us off us with these tales – telling us not to lie and all if not we would end up like what is depicted in the 10 Courts of Hell.

Hence the quote: “Do Not Commit Sin”

PROCESS


Off to shoot the typographic composition that same weekend on a Saturday morning. First thing that caught my eye about the place or rather the first impression I got of the place was: Colourful, majestic, yet scary. The sculptures and architecture were really vibrantly coloured and intricately crafted!!

These were the few images that I took eventually to use for cropping to form the letters of the composition (click on image to enlarge and view):

The biggest challenge while shooting at Haw Par Villa was to avoid continously shooting and using the organic wavy looking forms there for the composition as they were just everywhere since most of these forms were used as decorative elements to complement the sculptures and structures or used as platforms to raise them up. But I went ahead using some anyway as the wavy organic design it had helped with wavy letters like ‘S’ in my quote. Otherwise, it was really fun trying to spot letters for the quote through observing the form, structures and sculptures at Haw Par Villa 🙂

Now that the shoot’s done, time to get started on the typographic composition and put the quote together! As I was doing, I realised that some of the objects that I shot did not exactly show the intended letter of the quote and I had to fall back on other images taken. Luckily, apart from only shooting forms for the letters for my quote I was shooting everything and almost anything I could spot at Haw Par Villa from various angles – That meant I had other pictures to fall back on. Phew!!

Here’s the first version of my typographic composition:

The problem about some of the letters not being that visible in the composition as mentioned above was addressed during the second week of consultations as well by Shirley when we showed her our progress for the composition. She shared about the Gestalt principle, how when seeing things we tend to group them together by colours to for easier and quicker viewing. Hence if there are too many things going on in that cropped frame, it will be hard for the viewer to identify the letter as compared to a frame with only probably two colours involved (less details/a contrast in the background and foreground).

She pointed out that these two Letter ‘O’s in the composition were cropped well and good examples of that because of the clear contrast/distinction between the letter and its background in terms of colours and little details:

Bulk of the advice given for the first version was either to crop the image of each letter tighter,  make the background/foreground of the letter’s cropped frame lighter/darker to help better distinguish the letter form. Also, it was mentioned that the image used for the Letter ‘T’s were unable to stand out based on the same principle. There was just too many things going on so it would be good to use other images for those letters. Probably just working with images that are made up of subjects/objects that uses just one to two main colours. These were the changes made:

And here’s the the revised version done based on the previous week of consultation (a week before submission):

Shirley and my peers’ feedback helped! I do get the feeling that the letters of the typographic composition looked way clearer than it was before now! Just some slight amendments, a bit more cropping to be made for some of the letters and I was good to go 🙂

FINAL

Here’s the final look of the typographic composition for submission:

I was a little reluctant to repeat the image used for letter ‘m’ but eventually I guess I did not have a choice as some letters were really hard to picture. Some letters that did not make the cut as seen below:

Overall I enjoyed working on the project and it really trained my observation skills, to constantly be aware of my surroundings while at Haw Par Villa in order to identify my letters for the typographic composition. Also, thanks to that trip, I now have a better insight of the place too!