research

There are 24 posts tagged research (this is page 1 of 3).

Watermedia Landscape Painting: Progress for Final Assignment (Week 13)

Topic: Interior

Week 13 update! Painted the topic interior.

Final artwork #2 – embroidery

20cm x 28.2cm

Studies, Color Tests & Thumbnailing

Looked mostly into a combination of Arkhipov and Inness for this topic.

 

Color test (with a different composition)

(got too excited to try out the colors with the final after doing this color test and the Inness study so I headed right for final after this piece…)

 

Inness Study

(studying how the transitions are handled on the trunk and retaining chroma but woops with the many green HAHAHA)

 

Random balance practice (looking into transitional colors – purple/brown)

Reviewed the video on transitional colors and did a super quick practice on my own based on class time’s abstraction practice and view from window

Thumbnails for final / color tests

For the layout of the piece, I liked Arkhipov’s subjects (embroidery/women) and wanted to do something a little similar, so I combined some Arkhipov/embroidery/yangqin poses and embroidery to try to catch the same intimacy in the image.

 

Moodboard/References

Images: Arkhipov, Inness, Yangqin player, Chinese clothes, Cheesecake Factory photo from a trip to US, Embroidy close-up

Past Studies for this piece (quick reference)

Archipov Study #1

Arkhipov Study #2

Reflections so far

Not very happy with how little chroma is retained in the final and also I think I still isolated subjects again… I know some of the persisting problems I have and still accidentally committed them during painting RIP. :’) Need to turn on my brain more during practice and less rushing. I’m so glad I borrowed Inness’ book to study from the school library before circuit breaker.

If time permits, I’ll try to get another piece done for the final (Weather Condition/Tinted) or revisit Landscape/Interior.

(If not, I’ll practice on my own anyway HAHAHA)

Illustration for Designers: Assignment 3 (Week 11-12 Progress)

Assignment 3: Week 11 – 12

I was a little stuck between a tea party for witches or a prom for supernatural creatures ( or even a zombie body parts auction my brain is poot). I went with the prom in the end!

Selected Event

Prom for Supernatural Creatures

Target Audience User Persona

I created two user personas – one specific to the event and the other is a real life user persona.

Moodboard

Since I went with the prom idea, I looked back to my unused moodboard from Assignment 2 that I really liked and found would fit the event really well. I wanted the prom to be dark, but still ultimately fun, teen and wholesome!

 

Research & Mind-Map

I dumped a bunch of things onto the mind-map and tried to see what I could use – since the creatures and their representations would set the tone of the party and items.

I imagined myself in the shoes of the student council/staff in order to try to figure out what assets would be needed for a prom… and did lots of research since I went to poly and not JC, so I’ve never really gone to a prom myself. (I will live vicariously through this project I guess)

16 Thumbnail Sketches

Stickers Thumbnails:

E-Invite Thumbnails:

Prom King/Queen Poster Thumbnails:

Warning Poster Thumbnails:

 

Conceptual Visuals (Pencil Comps)

I decided to stick with these 4 items for the finals:

  1. Sticker Pack (Prom Favour)
  2. E-Invite (Gif, because moving items look magical!!!)
  3. Prom King Voting Poster
  4. Prom Queen Voting Poster

Honestly I’d make all the assets move and breathe if I could but I’ll do the e-invite first… and see how about the rest. :’)

I started working on the stickers first since it would be the easier asset to use to visualize what a school of supernatural creatures would be like – their clubs, facilities and space!

Here are some work-in-progress items:

Got some feedback from Lisa that it might be better to simplify since the details may be lost at a smaller sizing (smoke strips/claw), so I removed them and strove to do the other stickers in a similar vein.

Final Compositions (Asset #1: Sticker Pack of 5)

Sticker #1: Bone Hockey Student Club

Joining costs an arm and a leg

Sticker #2: Poisons & Venoms Student Club

Tasters get extra CCA points

Sticker #3: Spelltown Junior College Student Council

Working day and night to enhance your student life

Sticker #4: Student Welfare Committee

For the bleeding hearts

 

Sticker #5: Theatre Student Club

Cultural diversity!

I want to join the wing brigade. :’)

Illustration for Designers: Varoom & Artist Research (Week 5)

Activity 1: Varoom Articles

About Varoom Magazine:

The Varoom magazine is a biannual publication by the Association of Illustrators. The magazine features insight and analysis of the illustration, design and animation industry, with content such as interviews, recommendations as well as commentary. Each magazine’s illustrated content come from a variety of artists and revolves around a singular theme.

Varoom’s latest Fantasy issue

What type of information is in the magazine?

As an example, the latest issue Fantasy features articles on games, graphic novels, the TV series Game of Thrones, Ram Han and all that is related to the fantasy genre or fantastical in nature.

What do I find inspiring?

The variety and freedom in stylistic choices employed by the artists who have contributed to Varoom is amazing!

Who’s the target audience?

Art enthusiasts, educators and practitioners

 

Selected Articles:

(1) Hail Herman Inclusus

The article is about Herman Inclusus (Stuart Kolakovic) and the inspiration for his style – traditional Christian manuscripts, icons or Islamic miniatures. The content explores his rebirth and discusses what he derives and gleans from these traditional works.

It also announces how Lichen, his graphic novel, marks the end of his past aesthetic choices and also his shift into his identity as Herman Inclusus, as well as what that means for him.

The article shows a complicated bond between one artist’s identity and their influences – how their influences and growth would show in their choice of aesthetic style and subject matter. The content is great for people who are interested in his personal influences and where his motifs are derived from.

(2) Cloak of Fantasy

The article excerpt is an interview with Victo Ngai on her art creation process.

It provides insight to her personal journey and steps to art-making – such as how she goes about conceptualizing for the image and her thought process and influences (stage play).

The article is wonderful for those seeking to go into a similar field of work or to achieve a similar art direction or struggling in the same format that Victo Ngai works in. Alternatively, it is also good for people looking to change certain aspects of their production to organize their personal working processes.

For enthusiasts, it promotes Victo Ngai’s work as the article features a work that the network of Game of Thrones commissioned her to illustrate. Those who have watched Game of Thrones, in turn, would be drawn in to know more about Victo Ngai.

Activity 2: 3 Artist Research

(1) Victo Ngai

What do you find inspiring?

Her works are intricate, colorful and gorgeous. The way she seamlessly integrates traditional and digital mediums to make use of the strengths of both mediums (the raw intricacies of traditional, and vibrant colors and clean look of digital) is extremely inspiring for myself as I love working traditionally but struggle to find a way to reconcile it with digital programs after scanning it in.

What mediums do they use?

Traditional, Digital

How do they creatively interpret the text for the article?

The article The Burden of Beasts discusses the surging population of donkeys and how they are being relocated. The illustration by Victo Ngai represents this as huge human hands picking up the donkeys and their fences, signifying human intervention.

Victo Ngai’s way of depicting the literal in a serene but intricately illustrated scene makes the content look like a tale out of a storybook and creates intrigue with how ridiculous, but elegant it looks.

(2) Tess Stone

Hanna Is Not A Boy’s Name, a webcomic by Tess Stone.

Comic panel from Not Drunk Enough

What do you find inspiring?

Tess Stone has gorgeous comic layouts, harsh colors and and hand lettering that makes every page and panel exciting to read. There’s no wasted element, and the characters and text complement each other extremely well as both their designs carry a similar intensity in the types of lines used (generally with thicker/harsher shadows on characters and good line weight distribution between what’s focused/not in focus).

What mediums do they use?

Digital

How do they creatively interpret the text for the article?

Tess Stone is a comic artist and writer with very cool character designs, hand lettering and color design for his comic pages. In terms of interpreting text, Tess Stone is amazing at delivering the speech of characters and sound effects that gives text just as much animations as the story’s characters do.

Other than the text, the panels (dividers) add so much value to the delivery of the story as well with how they are designed in each page!

(3) Tatsuyuki Tanaka

What do you find inspiring?

Tatsuyuki Tanaka is an illustrator, concept art designer and animator. He known for many things – some of them being key animator of the Japanese animated movie Akira and being part of an animation team called Genius Party responsible for a series of extremely interesting and exploratory animations.

Genius Party: Dimension Bomb

I find that his works are incredibly detailed and he’s able to deliver subtle commentary about the current state of the world through his works. His personal works are interesting because they don’t seem to deliver the message directly, rather, his image builds up an environment that allows you to establish your own set of expectations (dystopian, post-apocalyptic) and your imagination/speculation provokes you to make something out of the images he provides.

What mediums do they use?

Digital, Traditional

How do they creatively interpret the text for the article?

He has done quite a covers of short novels. A running theme in his art are clutter, the mechanical and a universe that seems almost dystopian/post-apocalyptic. His palette is also muted to highlight the excessive detail in the linework (backgrounds, subject matter).

From these three covers, two of them feature the world of the novel and one cover is more character-centric. Personally, I find that the interpretation of a scene with the setting featured as ‘the character’ (the main subject) quite creative as it provokes alot of speculation and work from the reader’s end through creating many points of interest (since there is no living subject to instantly create a bond with).

Link to Assignment 2 (Final Artwork + Process): https://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/laum0005/illustration-for-designers-assignment-2-final-varoom/

Illustration for Designers: Week 2 (Activity 1 and 2)

Activity 1

Week 2’s class activity was doing an exercise on shapes (Bauhaus drawing exercise?) and a 15-min portrait of a classmate!

Not sure what is going on with all the shapes.

We both drew Nisa!

And Nisa’s portrait of me-

She’s so good and fast it’s crazy (;u;)

Activity 2: Research on Self-Portraits and Artists!

Here are three artists whom I think are really inspirational and their insane self-portraits:

  1. Hirohiko Araki
  2. Jamie Hewlett
  3. Salvador Dali

1) Artist: Hirohiko Araki

Hirohiko Araki’s self portrait on his book “Hirohiko Araki’s Manga Techniques”

Famous for: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (Manga series running from 1987-present)

I started reading and watching Hirohiko Araki’s Jojo series recently at a friend’s recommendation. Hirohiko Araki’s work draws alot of inspiration from Sherlock Holmes, Renaissance sculptures, paintings and western music (such as Pink Floyd, Styx, Queen).

His self portrait features himself and a character in his series named Rohan. Hirohiko Araki drew many parallels between himself and this character – in interviews.

Compared to his usual works, his self-portrait on the book cover was surprisingly tame – just an image of himself embracing a character who’s most similar to himself.

Hirohiko Araki’s illustrations and a panel excerpt from his comic

Medium:

Traditional. (Nib pens and markers)

Color, Line, Texture:

In his works, he accentuates the facial features and is fond of designing complicated, impractical clothing. He’s not afraid to distort proportions and challenging constructs – frequently forgoing realistic colour choices for strong colours with more emotive qualities. In one of his books, he notes Paul Gauguin as one of his influences in his colour choice – one of the Fauvism influences.

The lines he uses are meticulous and he uses hatching techniques in emphasizing the strength of shadows and imply different tones in black-and-white pages, such as the features on the characters’ faces and in drapery. He casts more realistic shadows than stylized ones – making characters resemble Renaissance sculptures.

His mastery of line weight allows him to create a plethora of textures within the design of characters. The following is one example of different textures in the characters’ hairstyles:

What’s inspiring:

What I really took away from his work is the spirit of challenging perceptions with his art and it was very interesting to look into how he does research on the things he likes in order to work on comics, guidebooks and illustrations – and how these inspiration translates into elements within his art and turned into a distinctive visual style.

References:

Celebrating The Art and Fashion of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/2019-07-31/celebrating-the-art-and-fashion-of-jojo-bizarre-adventure/.149560

Jojo’s Araki Creates Manga for France’s Louvre Museum:
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2009-01-22/jojo-araki-creates-manga-for-france-louvre-museum

Gucci Windows Come To Life With Exclusive Manga: https://www.herworld.com/fashion/gucci-windows-come-life-exclusive-manga/

Vizmedia – Message from Hirohiko Araki – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Fashion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2FHRUjBI6Q

 

2) Artist: Jamie Hewlett

From Jamie Hewlett’s instagram – self portrait in 2018

Famous for: Tank Girl, Gorillaz

Medium: Traditional (ink, paints) and digital

Color, Line, Texture:

Jamie Hewlett’s self portrait consists of only two colors (blue and red) on a canvas and a giant smile. Blue is used for indicating skin tones and some features, while red is used to block out the background of the self portrait and used to indicate his spectacles and clothes (the inanimate items). The spaces left blank are left to indicate a light source coming from the left side.

The lines, compared to his usual works that feature a cleaner finish, are loose and messy. The lines are also marked in with the paints and creates alot of broken lines.

What’s inspiring:

From Hewlett’s portrait, it is reassuring to know that sometimes artists may take a completely different (or opposite) approach when it comes to their self-portraits! While it’s not as polished and as impressive as his usual works, Hewlett’s portrait reflects his frame of mind, insinuating that he’s having a good time and he’s being casual and experimental with his own portrait.

Reference: 

Jamie Hewlett’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hewll/

 

3) Artist: Salvador Dali

Soft Self-Portrait With Grilled Bacon (1941)

Famous for: Surrealist paintings, The Persistence of Memory

Medium: Traditional, oil on canvas

Color, Line, Texture: 

The painting is a brown monochromatic colour scheme. There are no distinct strokes, favouring a more painterly style. The face is painted to be soft and almost gooey, as if melting, and the fork-like crutches are trying their best to hold up all the features (even the chin!) on the face so that they would stay as a recognizable face.

What’s inspiring: The self-portrait introduces an extra dimension of smell to go with the viewing experience! Most people have eaten grilled beacon and from the captioning of the self-portrait, we are able to recall the smell while viewing the image. This makes viewing the self-portrait extra interesting since we can not only experience what’s drawn but also what’s ‘not there’.

His painting also features multiple seemingly unrelated objects and elements in them to convey meaning and utilizes trompe-l’oeil (art technique to deceive the eye). There’s always alot to take apart in his works.

Reference: 

Soft Self-Portrait with Grilled Bacon: https://www.salvador-dali.org/en/museums/dali-theatre-museum-in-figueres/the-collection/138/soft-self-portrait-with-grilled-bacon

Typography I: Typographer of Week 9 – Tobias Frere-Jones

TYPOGRAPHER: TOBIAS FRERE-JONES

Frere-Jones is an American type designer who had designed over 500 type faces – crazy! From the readings on him, it seems like he really picked type and stuck by it.

Some of the typefaces he designed includes Gotham and Interstate.

 Gotham was popularized throughout New York City in signages, Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and other campaigns. Interstate was designed as homage to Highway Gothic, the official typeface of the American Federal Highway Administration.

Typefaces are Solutions

Frere-Jones talks in specific about typefaces for the different mediums and display (for print and for web) in this particular video. The video really highlights the problems that surfaces when a typeface is directly plucked from print and placed for web-reading, down to pixels!

The most interesting thing about this video for me is that the video provides the different methods to solve and clarify the typefaces for web, and the specific problems in specific letters down to pixels. It’s a really in-depth review of his experiences, experimentation and solutions for type problems.

I think this is really importance as a designer today where the computer screen is (almost) king.

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: “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: 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.

 

Typography I: On The Elements of Typographic Style

On The Elements of Typographic Style

(Chapter 1 page 17-25)

The text gives a good start and breakdown on how to approach designing text. I especially appreciate “1.2.2 Discover the outer logic of the typography in the inner logic of the text.”

My own ‘Good Practice Checklist’
  1. Understand your content and make a decision
    (To give your design a voice)
  2. Decide on a treatment
    (What are some appropriate looks for your content? What is suitable for the company and client?)
  3. Respect your content, do your research
    (What’s the agenda? Check if there are any rules or sensitivities regarding your given content, and check if there are any existing graphics that are similar to what you have in mind)
  4. Dress your content
    (The technical aspects of design: What medium are you using? What colors and typefaces? What’s the layout like?)
About the text: ‘Well-chosen words deserve well-chosen letters’

To expand on certain aspects of ‘On The Elements of Typographic Style’, it’s definitely the job of typography to help words be expressed in their best form, with many factors considered.

If the content is meant to disturb, then perhaps a cold, unfeeling font or design should be selected for that purpose.

If the content is meant for digital platform, the design must take advantage of what the platform has to offer to give viewers the best and most correct experience.

I definitely think that priority should be about what fits good, rather than what looks good. Mismatching design and content would be doing a disservice to the efforts put into both. I think it’s definitely a good reflection for myself as well as it’s something I have to remember while working on my personal works.

About the text: Color as an ancient metaphor

This is definitely the first time I have heard of color used to refer to ‘the darkness or blackness of the letterforms in mass’. I have never looked at it in this way and it’s interesting to consider, along with its different criteria.

As I usually looked at letterforms by considering thickness (width), roundness (edges) and its superficial characteristics, it’s fresh to think about how the text sees the letterforms as a mass, something that is filled in with solid weight with more dimensions to it.

Overall

I have definitely learnt alot from this reading. It is a good step-by-step written list of factors to consider when approaching a text to make it less daunting, and a good reminder to treat words carefully during your work/project.