Typographic Portrait: Process

IDEATION:

After my research, I sketched out various types of animals into my name using the different animal related occupations as a guideline and came up with a few samples I could use.

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However, after sketching out the animals into random occupations, I felt that it was lacking a bit of personal branding, and seemed like a very straight forward concept.

CONCEPTUALISATION:

Upon reading the writeup on rhetorical figures, I decided to do a play on irony, using the animals, as well as the fact that I am colourblind, which I think is something you don’t often find in an Arts school. I utilised two groups of animals in my four compositions – animals that had poor colour vision, and animals that had colour vision that far superseded that of humans, and reversed their colours.

example sketch 1

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Household pets such as cats, dogs, and rabbits are known to be extremely colour deficient

 

example sketch 2

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Birds are known to have extra sensitive perception of colour (to the point of differentiating the ultra-violet) — specifically birds that hunt in the water, and birds that pollinate flowers.

 

example sketch 3

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While mammals are generally known to have good colour vision, elephants have the same level of colour vision as colour blind humans, and are the exception to the rule. Snakes have limited vision, and sense their prey using temperature. Seals, among all marine creatures have the worst colour vision, despite having to dive into the water to hunt for fish.

 

example sketch 4

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Amongst marine mammals, the orca is known to have the best colour vision. The mantis shrimp and the firefly squid are also known to have the best colour vision in comparison to the rest of the breeds of shellfish and cephalopods.

 

EXECUTION:

Upon consultation with Ina, she suggested I turn my sketches into digital vectors using Illustrator and provided me with some tutorials to watch. Using Illustrator and Photoshop I attempted (keyword being attempted) to create illustrations that could be turned into stickers to paste on my postcards.

 

example 1

PETS

Lines have been cleaned up using image trace on Illustrator, and animals have been coloured brightly and saturated exaggeratedly to make up for the colours they can’t see in real life.

 

example 2

BIRDS

Birds have been desaturated and filled in with only black and yellow tones, which is the colour that most colour deficient people and animals see. Sponge effect was added to give the dull colours more depth.

 

example 3

ZOO

Elephant and Seal are given greenish highlights and shadows while the Snake is coloured red as a play on their red-green colourblindness.

 

example 4

marine

Monochrome colour scheme was used, and plastic effect was added to give the rubbery feel of the marine creatures.

 

ADDITIONAL EXPLORATION:

I was just playing around with some material in class to see what I would create, and maybe use some of them as background images for the post cards.

 

Paint printing using bubble wrap (with digitally manipulated colours)

BUBBLES

Charcoal dusting on glue tape strips

CHARCOAL

Texture of hair (for hygiene purposes, this is a pile of my own hair)

HAIR

Pastel dust on white glue on black pastel paper

PASTEL

END

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