– Vernacular FINAL –
My area: CBD area
I thought it’d be quite interesting to see how the CBD area would look like in terms of the typefaces that all the offices or shops use.
So i walked from Fullerton Hotel all the way down to Tanjong Pagar area, going through the buildings and seeing what interesting fonts or typefaces people used on their signages as well. So my concept for my tagline was to show how even in the CBD area, where all the formal work is done in the day, when it transits in the night, there are areas in the CBD are where you can have fun and just chill and not take things so seriously.
Therefore in my Vernacular assignment, you can see how the fonts change and morph from dull & formal serif fonts to more fun and coloured san serif fonts. Hence “When the Night Begins”.
Below is my single letter in black and white. The letter, although not obvious to see is from a hose reel where the original text it was from was spray painted on a stencil. I thought it was quite interesting and I really like the vintage effect and feel after changing it to black and white and taking away the background.
What I like about this particular font is that the edges are not perfect, leaving it a bit messy and raw. There are even some patches where the alphabet hasn’t been spray painted on properly.
These are a few other pictures i found in the CBD area. There is really a variety of fonts everywhere, it’s just a matter of where to find them.
Layout Attempts:
- Layout 1 (above). This was just a starting attempt. After getting my phrase as well as concept, i thought of jumbling the lines up, giving them different angles to play around it. But i wasn’t feeling it and it has no meaning to be jumbled up as such. At first i thought it’d be interesting to do it as such because of the “night life” aspect of it. More exciting, not rigid and going in straight lines. But nope, this doesn’t work for me.
2. Layout 2 (above). This particular layout i quite liked at first, even though it’s not jumbled up per say, the feeling of excitement is still there because of the different cropping sizes of the fonts. So this is something i noticed after doing up my layout 1. This layout i kept in view first.
3. This 3rd layout was really just to see how it looked like when it was slanted. Again, the feeling of being a bit off and tipsy because when the night begins, so does the way you look at things. Something i thought was interesting, but aesthetically, not quite there.
4. This layout was when i was thinking of playing with the concept of formal work life in the day, where you start off small not so excited, but as the night starts to set in, the text gets bigger, more colourful and more vibrant. But i didn’t really like that it looked like a Christmas tree to me. Sooooo, maybe not.
5. So for my final layout, i actually just went back to straight lines. Each words is about the same size, BUTTT! each letter is different from the one next to it, so it has the feeling of excitement or of having fun. So in a way, there is a combination of rigidity as well as playful excitement. After all, this is still in the CBD area, so the rigidity reflects that. But the difference in size between the fonts add that something extra
The letter that i chose in the end for the 18×18 is the one above. This is when i left the background. As i mentioned earlier, it is actually a spray paint using a stencil. So likewise to my arrangement of the quote, this letter here has both rigidity as well as a form of rawness and playfulness. Rigid because a stencil was to give its main shape and form, but because the spray paint smudged a little, it spreaded outwards, slightly taking away the perfect form that it was supposed to have.
So below is the route i took, or a rough look at the route i took, i stopped many a time just to try and find for an interesting font.
Conclusion!!
But all in all, it was an interesting assignment, getting us to get out of school and away from our computers and explore on our own. This forced me to really observe what kind of fonts there were and it got me thinking if using that font was necessary. And even if it was necessary, what exactly is the purpose of that particular font.