Today’s class talked about SWAMI and we did a little word association activity! I was with Sam, Yingying and Joel and we picked the Lover archetype to expand on.
Typography I: In-Class Activity – Word Association (Lover)
October 2018
Typography I: In-Class Activity – Custom Drop Cap
Lettered an A today for the drop cap exercise!
I made it asymmetrical at first but after placing it into text, I probably should have lettered something more square-ish. It was a really fun exercise though!
Typography I: Archetypes and Typography
Jessica Hische
Talking Type
Jessica Hische’s article discusses the various criteria to consider when picking your type. In the beginning of the article, she also compares how similar web and type designers are (in the thought that goes behind their design and in how they are underappreciated).
In this article, typefaces are also compared to outfits and how overuse will cause the typeface to become stale and outdated. I feel that this is likely the most accurate sort of comparison – different typefaces as different articles of clothing, dressing the body that is the content.
Here’s my favorite part of the article – the Il1 test!
While it should be something obvious, this is something rather new to me as I’ve not explored and noticed enough type to be able to consciously think about the individual letter forms and the part they play within a chunk of text in our daily lives. The Il1 test really showed how important a single letter could be, as typefaces that fail the Il1 test could create misunderstandings and trouble, like the fake London 2012 twitter mentioned in the article.
The differences between Il1 was usually something I’ve never thought too much about but recently, I’ve come across a similar incident myself while reading some online text. I had to copy paste the text onto my address bar to check if it was a ‘1’ or an ‘l’, so I can see how much type makes our lives easier (and most people aren’t actually aware of that!).
It’s a very useful article to hunt for resources as well, with great suggestions at the end for web font services where you can get fonts to use for your works.
Landor.com
Archetypes in branding: How to build a consistent archetype-based brand strategy
Landor’s article focuses on aspects of branding, such as branding strategies, branding narratives and brand creation. Most importantly, it focuses on the part that archetypes play in creating a brand.
Images from Landor Milan
From what I’ve gathered from the article, a brand is important as it would justify its role in an individual’s life. Every consumer is a central figure and I feel that brands play different archetypes to not just be able to appeal to certain people but also to fulfill the many different needs of a single person. As mentioned in the article, it is to allow the consumer to align themselves with set of attributes and values that they believe in so that they can shape themselves in a desired direction.
It’s amazing how the archetype works in helping businesses to save time. Once aligning themselves and defining their brand, the ‘yes’ and ‘no’s of advertising the brand immediately becomes clear and straightforward as it determines the sort of content that has to be pushed out. In turn, the consistency of content leads to value and trust from the consumers, and raises the value of their content and products.
The 12 Brand Archetype, image from Hive Creative Group
Overall
To apply what I have read from these articles, I decided to take some of the brands I’ve come to love over the years to try to discover what sort of role they try to play in a consumer’s life.
Square Enix
There’s Square Enix who made some of my all-time favourite games like the Final Fantasy, Nier and Kingdom Hearts games. I would think that they play the role of the Outlaw, as they are always striving to always looking to one-up other games in graphics and make a revolutionary game. They offer a completely different world in each of their games as well as strive create new wondrous lands and lores constantly for their consumers to explore, travel and learn.
Oreo
There is also Oreo, who takes on the Innocent archetype. I absolutely loved their Wonderfilled advertisement, where they had a beautiful animation and a catchy song/jingle. It’s nostalgic and gentle, reaching out to people with fantastical ideas. It’s probably still one of my all-time favorite advertisements and songs because of how absolutely adorably idealistic it is.
Sennelier
Then there is also Sennelier, a brand who provides art supplies. I would think that Sennelier takes on the role of the Magician. They are always providing high quality art supplies and strive for the best quality of watercolor paints. There are many artists who swear by their watercolors, especially a certain shade of red that they offer (I think it was the Alizarin Crimson). They take pride in the works that their consumers can produce from their products (the magic!).
It’s amazing how we have all been unknowingly pulled around by brands and I really do feel that the more I learn, the less I realized I actually know.
Typography I: Typographer of Week 8 – Herb Lubalin
TYPOGRAPHER: HERB LUBALIN
I feel Lubalin – I would like to devote my life to painting after I retire too!
I find it really sad that Lubalin neither got the chance retire nor to devote his life to painting after retirement like he wanted to, passing on at the age of 63.
He is an American graphic designer and considered political for his lack of fear to declare his allegiances, creating works intended for positive societal and political changes.
Lubalin’s Typefaces
Lubalin was also a type designer and some of his typefaces include the ITC Avant Garde Gothic, Ronda and Lubalin Graph.
It can be noted that Lubalin Graph is a typeface family on its own but was derived from Avant Garde Gothic. The Avant Garde Gothic typeface was originally designed for the Avant Garde magazine.
The original Avant Garde logo by Lubalin
Despite the overuse and misuse of Avant Garde Gothic in 1970s, it’s still extremely influential and remains as one of Lubalin’s most iconic fonts.
Between the two, Lubalin Graph consists of more geometric letter forms, making it unsuitable for chunks of text but more suitable as logos and shorter, non-continuous texts.
U&lc (Upper and lower case)
U&lc is also known as Lubalin’s typographic journal, intended for him to promote his designs as well as provide a space for his experimentation to see how far he could push lettering. The journal is enviable as it was a space where Lubalin is his own client. Every designer (and artist) would find it hard to be able to pursue their own endeavors when they had to struggle with churning out designs to put food on their plate.
Overall
Lubalin is definitely in a class from his own. While I have not come across alot of his works until now, his works have a unique flow and look to them. It’s almost like a signature! His typefaces and works are elegant, gorgeous and even to some degree, painterly. Even his studio logo screams a unique personality.
He does seem to draw heavy influences from the Art Deco movement. His works are idealistic, exclusive and luxurious. As someone who is extremely inclined towards visual arts and towards the similarly luxurious Art Noveau myself, most of his works are visually engaging, satisfying and most definitely a big treat for my eyes.
Typography I: “Wake up and smell the fonts” by Sarah Hyndman
FONTS TURN WORDS INTO A STORY
Hyndman talks about fonts on a more intimate manner – how typefaces can give words personality, backstory and influence. In the video, she also gives insight to how being a professional designer requires you to understand what the client means and not what they say.
After going through this week’s reading (or video), I have definitely begun to see the multitude of roles that typography can play in our lives.
Typefaces make the words anything you want them to be and the actual meaning of the word diminishes the more the word is dressed – with different tones of voice, body language and more. Typefaces alter a person’s physical impression and experiences easily, like from the example Hyndman gives about the two different jelly beans that were represented by different fonts.
It’s surprising to know how much our physical experiences can be easily changed by our first impressions and how unreliable our senses are.
Personally, I also think that a person’s prior experiences contributes to how we approach an experience. For example, what sort of fonts do we expect to be associated with something spicy or something sour? Like in the video, I believe as well that most people would associate that with a sharp-edged font.
Earlier this week in class (17/10), I have also gotten to learn about archetypes and I believe that the media we are exposed to also slowly conditions us to expect things to taste or turn out in a certain predicted manner that would place us at ease. Due to this, storytelling with type would go well when fonts are chosen aptly.
It’s very interesting to relate Hyndman’s talk to what we’ve learnt in class so far and something that I personally definitely would want to experiment with through my assignments and posters if I have the opportunity to. Overall, it was really cool to know through Hyndman’s talk on how typographers and designers are able to use how our minds against us – how they are able to trick and condition people to make decisions in a certain projected manner and we are actually alot less in control of our own decisions than we would like to think.
Typography I: Typographer of Week 7 – Erik Spiekermann
TYPOGRAPHER: ERIK SPIEKERMANN
Erik Spiekermann is a German designer and typographer who aims to adapt and represent content appropriately. He also sees typography as a connection in communication design – linking products such as books, editorials, corporate items and more.
On a more random note, it’s cool to see a mention of Neville Brody while reading about Spiekermann and to know that Spiekermann partnered with Brody on FUSE and FontShop as well.
“A font should fuzz abit” – Can you see from a font where it comes from?
The article also mentions how Spiekermann discusses that fonts from the same type designers do indeed look like they came from the same designer, since designers are influenced by the traditions that they stands by.
I can’t help but to agree that it’s difficult for a designer and artist to break away from their designs – it would have to take alot of time to shift away from what they’ve made due to their unique experiences with different teachings and environments.
Designers tend to return to the same tools they have been taught to use as well and no one designer would be able to always use the same techniques in the same order due to the differences in their technical experiences as well (e.g. angles of strokes/choice of pen sizes).
On Typomaniac
In the video Typomaniac, Spiekermann speaks about information design for phone/web applications. He branded Nokia for 2001 and also talks about how “the function has to be the brand”, meaning how the product would have to function well to reflect the brand well (and how they are interlinked).
He also brought up several useful resources for creating dummy interfaces, such as Antetype, and mentioned a couple of cool tips in the video such as taking note of the screen that you are designing for. This is most definitely an important reminder to a designer – since it would not do to get too absorbed in designing an interface that looks amazing on its own but would fit on the interface it is intended for. It would end up in a terribly butchered design.
Overall
I enjoyed reading about Spiekermann’s processes and most definitely can relate to his fast-paced mode of going about design. I enjoy churning out drafts and assets early, so that they could be refined quickly.
A fast-paced process is definitely more suitable as well for a corporate environment where one has to work with many companies and clients. It’s not effective to repeatedly produce complicated work for brands that requires new assets quickly. Fast and simple is frequently more effective – just like how Spiekermann showed that people can identify Volkswagen by their blue and type.
Typography I: Assignment 2 – The Walls Have Ears! (Part 3/3)
THE MENU
- Final Posters
- Decisions
- Link to Part 1 & Part 2
FINAL POSTERS
►Poster 1: Chicken
Quote: “So how the turkey leg? Ok lor, bigger than your chicken but more dry.”
►Poster 2: Doodle
Quote: “Later I show you my super polished, hyper finished doodle.”
►Poster 3: Shadow
Quote: “Last night I dreamt that I became a shadow.”
DECISIONS
For this set of posters, I decided to be minimal about them – no textures, with clean and crisp edges.
Writing the Letters: Process
I used Photoshop to write the letters. I often draw with Photoshop and I felt that the effect created through creating letters and manually warping with Photoshop is an extremely different experience compared to creating them on Illustrator. (But it could be due to my lack of experience with Illustrator as well which was something I realised after an office consultation… I promise I’ll practice more!)
Photoshop also provides an extremely different experience compared to writing on a traditional medium, so I decided to start working on them traditionally with thumbnails first, before scanning them in and writing over them or shaping and smoothing them out on Photoshop.
After achieving the effect I wanted on Photoshop, I ported them over to Illustrator and live-traced them, before cleaning and refining them in Illustrator again.
Layout and Composition
It was difficult creating a structured, yet unexpected composition. It’s much like talking to someone else – you can’t really predict what they’re going to say.
I intended for the posters to have a subtle point-of-view element and wanted the words to be the imagery and carry the tone of the dialog to depict how they were spoken. To convey the dialog’s human element, I chose whimsical and engaging layouts, as if they are engaging in a conversation with someone.
In Shadow and Doodle, the words are meant to be engaging with the viewer, flowing towards the viewer. In ‘Chicken’ where there are two persons conversing, I intended us to be the onlooker, a 3rd person, observing two parties talking.
Shadow has a couple of extra graphical elements other than the letters – the swirl, the hands and the graphics replacing ‘I’ – to show that ‘I’ have turned into something else.
I created the swirl to emulate the feeling of falling into deep sleep pulling you in. It’s the feeling of sinking down into a pillow after a long day and feeling like your consciousness is detached from your body.
Chicken is a little more direct. The words are shaped into a thick turkey and a smaller chicken, standing on hills akin to a farmland on a nice noon.
(Thinking about it, this dialogue is growing weirder every time I look at it; I personally think that turkey meat is more dry than chicken meat…)
Finally there is Doodle. I wanted the huge words in the middle to create expectations and draw eyes, and the smaller text ‘later I show you’ and ‘doodle’ to let you down (smoothly). The yellow circle is used as a spotlight, to draw attention to what ‘i show you’ is trying to preempt.
Color Choice
I chose to go with black, yellow, magenta and blue – basically CMYK. They are stark and I absolutely loved how loud they are beside each other.
I did try to reduce to less colors or try other palettes, but I feel like it just wouldn’t be just as loud without any of them. Like how the cyan/blue provides a counterbalance to the magenta and yellow in order to create a striking image.
To make the posters fit as a set and work in harmony, the tones are also to a milder version of the original CMYK.
TAKEAWAYS
Having wanted to experiment with drawing the letters and to train my eyes to be better at compositing, I’m quite happy with how they turned out despite not having expected to go this minimal at first. Since I’m obsessed with details in drawing and I enjoy maximalist art and posters, I was terrified of being minimal. I do see the appeal now and I’m definitely a whole lot more comfortable with exploring minimalism!
Granted, my posters are not exactly minimal, but they’re worked on with the thought of what I could subtract. It took me away from my usual train of thought since instead of thinking of what I could change and add to make it work, I had to keep thinking of what I could subtract and lose, but still convey what has to be said.
It was a really fun project! I learnt a ton and I’ve enjoyed working on all the posters even though it took me ages to work on lettering them. It makes me think that it’ll be so nice to get more writing practice soon too!
LINKS
Part 1 (Dialogs, Research and Thumbnails): https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/laum0005/typography-i-assignment-2-the-walls-have-ears-part-1-3/
Part 2 (Drafts, Feedback and Revisions): https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/laum0005/typography-i-assignment-2-the-walls-have-ears-part-2-3/
Typography I: Assignment 2 – The Walls Have Ears! (Part 2/3)
THE MENU
- First Drafts
- Feedback and Corrections
- Link to Part 1 & Part 3
FIRST DRAFTS
Chicken: I took inspiration from fast food restaurants as well as farms.
Shadow: I drew inspiration from storybooks as well as the character Pitch from Rise of the Guardians.
Doodle: I explored how to draw and warp words, as well as exaggeration.
DRAFT REVISIONS AND FEEDBACKS:
FEEDBACK (Recess Week)
The early drafts!
- Chicken:
– Strongest piece of the 3
– Reorder ‘Turkey’ and ‘leg?’
– Give the chicken a breathing space/unseen stroke, have Turkey go over it - Shadow:
– Weakest piece at the moment
– Reconsider the composition - Doodle:
-Reorder layout
-Explore how to draw the words
FEEDBACK (12 / 10 / 2018)
- Chicken:
– To change color palette to tie in with shadows poster
– Keeping the grass is up to me but can take out the grass (since it doesn’t hurt the piece)
– Lisa suggests that it’s best to keep it minimal
(be deliberate about choices made)
- Shadow:
– To make hand (W) larger to line it up with ‘SHADO’
– Reduce thickness of O and reduce the size as well
– Even out the overall type
- Doodle:
– Handwrite it like the other two posters
– Make ‘POLISHED’ serifed and stand out (Handwritten serif)
– Making the word into a dragon is too much (Keep it non graphical and type-only)
– Enjoyed what is going on with the ligature for S and P
(A reminder: All the posters have to look like a SERIES!)
FEEDBACK (16 / 10 / 2018)
- Standardize the colors so that the three posters look like they belong in a set
- Removing frames, tweaking letters and layout
LINKS
Part 1 (Dialogs, Research and Thumbnails): https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/laum0005/typography-i-assignment-2-the-walls-have-ears-part-1-3/
Part 3 (Final Posters and Decisions): https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/laum0005/typography-i-assignment-2-the-walls-have-ears-part-3-3/
Typography I: Assignment 2 – The Walls Have Ears! (Part 1/3)
THE MENU
- Selected Lines
- Sketched Thumbnails
- Raw Dialogs (Fishing for dialogs)
- Link to Part 2 & Part 3
SELECTED LINES
The following are my selected text for the 3 posters.
1) A: So how the turkey leg?
B: Bigger than the chicken you ate yesterday la. But more dry.
2) Last night, I dreamt that I became a shadow.
3) Later I’ll show you my super polished hyper finished doodle.
(The raw dialogs and where they’re from are documented at the bottom of the post!)
POSTER THUMBNAILS
I decided from the start that I wanted to work on the posters by hand, instead of selecting existing fonts.
I feel that there’s a certain sort of human ‘spoken’ quality to words that are individually drawn and I think that this was the most suitable and fun way for me to work on the assignment.
I felt that it was a good opportunity to train my eye to be more sensitive to the qualities of fonts as well through crafting them letter by letter and shaping spaces.
Thumbnails for ‘Doodle’ line and ‘Shadow’ line.
More thumbnails for ‘Shadow’.
For ‘Shadow’, I wanted the Rip concept to have an intrusive and terrifying ‘shadow’ ripping through the middle of the poster, reaching for the viewer. However, I realised that it didn’t turn out whacky enough and not quite the way of how I wanted to tie my posters together as well.
The Window Shutter concept was something I was interested to explore as well, with the first two lines expressed as text that is concealed and behind a window, but the word ‘shadow’ would be expressed dark and wispy, opening the window with a hand. I kept this concept as I explored further.
More thumbnails for ‘Doodle’.
For ‘Doodle’, I started off with something I really wanted to play with and go for. I wanted the ‘later I’ll show you’ and ‘doodle’ to be not-as-impressive and conveyed in a lazy, sleazy and smug sort of way.
Like a smooth, well-dressed dude with eating potato chips while reclining on a couch sort of feeling – one that tricks you into something impressive but well… it’s not really. Kinda like a snake oil salesman. Somewhat oily.
As for ‘Chicken’, I didn’t quite start on any pencil thumbnails for it as I was trying to nail the sort of layout and type of lettering I wanted to go for. For ‘Chicken’, I went digital immediately. I’ll expand on the first drafts in Part 2! (‘u’)
RAW DIALOGS
I wish I didn’t hear half the things I’ve heard while dialog hunting. People look like they do the strangest things where there’s no context. I caught myself staring at a guy speaking loudly into this phone:
Dude: *to his phone* 她很漂亮! (She’s very pretty)
Phone: *repeats* 她很漂亮. (She’s very pretty.)
Dude: 她很漂亮! (She’s very pretty!)
Phone: *repeats again* 她很漂亮. (She’s very pretty.)
… And this went on for my entire trip from Pioneer MRT til Buona Vista MRT where I got off to make my way to VivoCity.
I still have absolutely no clue what went on.
There’s alot of dialog (without context) on the way to VivoCity (‘o’)
I collected my dialog over 2 days – the first on my way to VivoCity after school, and the second at a friends’ place, while preparing for a birthday party.
Dialog #1 (NTU Canteen 2, conversation between two dudes)
A: What was the person’s name again?
B: Jerry. Jeremy. Jeffrey.
A: I always thought it was Jennifer!
Dialog #2(On the MRT, between father and son)
A: It’s only one stop. I think your hat is a little too big for you.
B: I can’t see anything.
Dialog #3(On the bus, conversation between two guys secretly /and illegally/ munching)
A: So how the turkey leg?
B: Bigger than the chicken you ate yesterday la. But more dry.
Dialog #4 (On the MRT, two office ladies)
A: Hopefully yesterday the loud knocking is my neighbour but I dunno.
B: Too out of it to notice?
Dialog #5 (My friends discussing what to get for a birthday gift)
A: Three knives though. Who you gonna murder?
B: No la please. The knives not sharp enough. But seriously though they were cheaper than I expected. Clement should be okay with them.
Dialog #6 (On the bus, a line from a boy talking to his dad)
Last night, I dreamt that I became a shadow.
Dialog #7(My friends having a drawing get-together for a friend’s birthday)
A: Haiyoh what you doing?
B: You wait. Later I’ll show you my super polished hyper finished doodle.
LINKS
Part 2 (Drafts, Feedback and Revisions): https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/laum0005/typography-i-assignment-2-the-walls-have-ears-part-2-3/
Part 3 (Final Posters and Decisions): https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/laum0005/typography-i-assignment-2-the-walls-have-ears-part-3-3/
Typography I: Typographer of Week 6 – Jonathan Barnbrook
TYPOGRAPHER: JONATHAN BARNBROOK
On Barnbrook’s Typography: A Collection of Curiosities
Barnbrook mentions that he bases his works on typography and he views it close to language; speak in language that has never been spoken before. He also mentions one thing that I find interesting and relatable despite not having much experience as a designer yet:
The Curse of the Designer
-also known as: noticing details that the average untrained eye neither notices nor cares about. It’s an extremely relatable feeling whilst going through this course, working on my own posters and other graphics. However, I do realise that people are growing increasingly sensitive to design and information around them. People are increasingly less easy to manipulate and more ready to suspend disbelief, likely because of the amount of information they take in from the Internet.
Barnbrook also mentions design as being important in a very political and social age – to which I completely agree. I do think this is increasingly so as well because we’ve moved on to a more digital age – where there are alot more wars waged online than off. Good designs conveys culture, and in turn conveys reliability.
Finally, another point I found interesting about what Barnbrook said was an interesting point about clients. He roughly mentions designs being associated to their designer, and about how after you work for Company A, it may not be very suitable for you to immediately jump to Company B. Following that, he also discusses the lack of experience as a very good thing – because of how the designer is able to experiment and shape themselves with brilliant works.
On Barnbrook’s different fonts
I can’t believe he’s the man behind Exocet! Diablo II was one of the first games I played and it was a big part in my life – I even bought the official copy of the game again a couple of years later because I first played with a pirated disc (oh man).
The O of Exocet face is definitely one of the things that sets it apart from many other fonts. It was also used for a Dungeons & Dragons setting Planetscape but it’s (personally) incredibly hard now not to associate Exocet with Diablo especially since Blizzard is a high profile game company that’s known for lots of triple A titles. Blizzard games were a big part of my life while growing up. I especially enjoyed playing Warcraft as a kid too. I don’t think anyone can use Exocet anymore without someone going “Oh! Isn’t that the Diablo font?”. I personally definitely can’t dissociate from that.
Other than Exocet, I find Barnbrook’s designs really peculiar (down to how they are named).
I love this guy.