Final Project

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Typography I: Assignment 3 – Archetypes and Typography (Part 2/2)

CONTENTS

  • Final Outcome
  • About the Individual Archetypes
  • Link to Part 1 (Process)
FINAL OUTCOME

A5 Booklet (artcard, staplebound)

About: A booklet about the different archetypes going on a trip together. Left page is a hand-drawn silhouette of the archetype, while the left depicts a moment/scene that is more constructed (structural.). The individual archetypes are also represented in varying shades of different colors.

ABOUT THE INDIVIDUAL ARCHETYPES

Grid used: Modular Grid

► Explorer

Spread

Left Side (With Grid)

Right Side (With Grid)

 

Font Choice: Mount, Rockwild, Open Sans

Color Choice: Yellow/Orange. To me, these shades of yellow/orange represents grit and earth.

Concept (Left Side, Hand lettered): I gave Explorer little boots and a backpack! To me, the Explorer represents adaptability and practicality. I decided to go with mostly distinct and easy-to-follow lettering.

Concept (Right Side, Structural): As I’m basing my right page after a moment/scene in their trip, I decided to use a boarding pass to represent the flight. I used Open Sans for the structured look of an airport, and Mount and Rockwild contained to represent the Explorer. The dashed lines are also meant to show the perforation of the ticket but at the same time represent movement (elevators and travellators in an airport!).

► Hero

 

Spread

Left Side (With Grid)

Right Side (With Grid)

Font Choice: Mandrake, Rowdy Light, Open Sans

Color Choice: Blue. Blue and red are both common colors chosen for a hero. I decided to go with blue as I wanted to portray a more police-like hero, a do-gooder.

Concept (Left Side, Hand lettered): To me, Hero is bold and strong. I was very influenced by the many chinese novels I’ve been reading lately and decided to go for a more proper, square approach for Hero. The Hero is law-abiding, loud and big.  I incorporated a little bit of a slant for the lettering to depict some arrogance and pridefulness as well to contribute to the quality of loudness. I also used the ‘G’ from Mandrake to give the Hero a pair of flexing arms and convey that everything is okay!

Concept (Right Side, Structural): The right side depicts a scene from the text – of the burger that Hero gets to enjoy! The burger and layout is constructed out of mostly Rowdy Light, with select areas such as the ‘ceiling’ using Open Sans as Rowdy Light and Mandrake weren’t stiff and structured enough to portray the airport interior.

► Outlaw

Spread


Left Side (With Grid)

Right Side (With Grid)

Font Choice: Toxia, Rakesly

Color Choice: Red. Red to me is the sign of danger, individualism and law-breaking. It’s a very loud color that stands out from the others. I also chose to use almost-black red and off-white for the background to break away from the rest of the pages in terms of contrast.

Concept (Left Side, Hand lettered): Outlaw’s left page is the only one that breaks away from the rest subtle-ly. My impression of the Outlaw is someone who doesn’t care for the law, but doesn’t go out of his way to break it, only when it’s convenient for him – a lazy scoundrel. In accordance with this, he stands within the frame, but the tip of his cigarette peeks right out of the space that the individual archetypes are supposed to stand in (in white).

Concept (Right Side, Structural): The scene is set up to look like a lonely car driving on a vast sandy road with ‘no doing stuff’ signage. The text conveying the tale of the Outlaw has little cat ears and an S for a tail to represent the cat!

► Jester

Spread

Left Side (With Grid)

Right Side (With Grid)

Font Choice: Da Bomb, Nova Classic

Color Choice: Green. While I could have reversed Explorer and Jester’s colors easily, I felt that green is a more unorthodox choice for Jester. It throws off people abit and despite how it’s usually used for nature, it takes on a more unique and strange meaning when used to represent other things. Popular and more bizarre examples I can think of are DC’s Joker, The Mask or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I also decided to use green as it also represents a sense of freedom and doesn’t have the sense of ‘groundedness’ as the earthy brown/orange.

Concept (Left Side, Hand lettered): The lettered Jester is inspired by the pumpkin-like pants that a Jester wears as well as the curled tips of the Jester’s shoes, hence the exaggerated curves within the word. I wanted to portray a light form that’s almost dancing with the curves as well.

Concept (Right Side, Structural): For the structural side, I wanted to convey a simple and empty scene of a flower being held and blown away – that the Jester has nothing except the clothes on his back. Compared to the other structured pages, the Jester’s right page to me is also a reflection of his simple mind, using much less tones and easy to look at. I used a contrasted curly whimsical font to a classical one intending to show a juxtaposition and how this archetype is whimsical and tends to flip-flop in extremes.

► Magician

Spread

Left Side (With Grid)

Right Side (With Grid)

Font Choice: Dukeplus, Timeless

Color Choice: Purple. Purple is mysterious, elegant and regal. I feel that this color was most suitable for the Magician because of the sense of depth it conveys!

Concept (Left Side, Hand lettered): I modeled the handlettered text after the silhouette of a literal magician (with dress shoes and a bowtie!). To me, the Magician is authoritative and smooth, so I decided to represent that with something thick and bold, but fluid. The ends of the drawn letter trails off to something that is wispy and flame-like.

Concept (Right Side, Structural): On the right side, the scene depicts a structure akin to a medieval castle/building with the dash lines leading up to fireworks (fire flowers). I wanted to depict something that’s more grand and older compared to the rest, to show the old, and still burning bright, mind of the Magician.

► Lover

Spread

Left Side (With Grid)

Right Side (With Grid)

Font Choice: Youthful Touch, Josefin Slab

Color Choice: Pink. I considered red and other colors but still came full circle back to pink since it was a little difficult to escape the feminine impression this color gives (especially since I wanted to go for a more muted version of all the above colors).

Concept (Left Side, Hand lettered): I lettered Lover with delicate, flowers and bugs in mind. The first words I thought of when the word ‘Lover’ comes up were ‘infatuation’ and ‘sweet nothings’. It gives me the impression of a small delicate flower and honey. Hence, I lettered Lover with a much thinner body – like a light, youthful and refreshing touch.

Concept (Right Side, Structural): The scene is constructed to look like a pair of rings (represented by Os in the font Youthful Touch) and a torch-like airport control tower at the back. I decided to go with a larger percentage of white for this particular right page so as to convey the nature of the text (a wedding proposal – popularly represented in white).

 

LINKS

Process (Part 1/2): https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/laum0005/typography-i-assignment-3-archetypes-and-typography-part-1-2/

 

 

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/