Project 3: Task 2– Research and Development

Initially I wanted to do a dye-cut of the pinball machine, a continuation of my design for the poster but after feedback and much consideration, I decided that a dye-cut might not be necessary as it would be harder to determine the folds of my design.

FOLD

I found this fold online that I thought was pretty interesting and would work well with my design.

Final Design 

I stuck with the whole pinball & space theme where each of the programme is placed in a circular shape to represent different planets that volunteers can explore. I used different opacities of the circular orbitals to accentuate the background and illustrations of the planets as accents to the images. The use of the rocket on the front page followed by the inside spread is to represent the journey that one may embark on when they join the Arts&Health programme at the hospital.

Problems & Feedback

After my first consult with Michael, I learned about the use of hierarchy in my layouts. For instance, the spacing between text, colours, balance etc. determines what you want the reader to notice at first glance. I struggled a lot with the placement of my text on the front cover and found it hard to find a balance between the frame and the elements inside of it. Text placement was also an issue for me where the curvature of my “explore” did not fit with the texts that came below it and I had to rearrange, change the colours a few times to find the “perfect fit”. One of the things I learnt was how to use different shades of a colour to create visual hierarchy and that I should avoid using colours of the same shade if I want to create emphasise on certain elements.

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with my design but if I were to change anything, it would probably be the logo placement where the main hospital logo is in front and the arts and health logo at the back (and to avoid changing the logo colour). The “angular cloud” on the inside spread could also be better managed where I either change the placement or change the colour of the background of the semi-circle area if not it feels a little disconnected from the main page.

Project 3c: Type as Emotion

For project 3c, we had to express the word “HELLO” in the following moods: friendly, angry, seductive, confused, arrogant, depressed, annoyed, excited, bored. I used the font Gill Sans for all of the compositions. 

This was the first I thought of. I combined a variety of “hellos” with different opacities together to give the illusion of a blurred out hello much like how you feel when you’re confused by something. 

Initially I struggled with what else to do but as I played around with the letterforms, I realised that I could make a stick figureman out of the letters and tada this was what I came out with– a depressed stickman about to commit suicide.

If you look closely, you would be able to find the misspelled “Holle”, but if you couldn’t you would probably be feeling pretty annoyed. I intentionally misspelled hello this manner to make it even harder for the viewer to find the misspelled word by just shifting the “e” and “o” but keeping the rest of the letters. This made the misspelled hello blend in better with the rest of the hellos, making it harder to find the word and brings out the feeling of annoyance better. 

Much like your attention span, it starts out focused and bold but as time progresses and the feeling of boredom kicks in, you would slowly lose focus and attention, much like how the letter form slowly drops down and fades off. 

Other designs that didn’t make the cut.

 

Project 3b: Type as Pattern

For project 3b, we had to create a series of patterns using a single letterform and copy and repeat it to make an overall pattern. 

I started out with these 2 patterns and experimented with cutting up the text and playing with negative and positive spaces. However, after consult, Shirley said that I could try playing with more variations in sizes and density of text placement instead of just a flat repeated pattern. 

I started out with the pattern on the left and I really liked how it turned out using the descender of the “J”. It ended up looking like those telephone coil wires. The right pattern is the final edit after consult where I added a gradient and shortened the “J”. I think the spacing between the individual units and the gradient as well as the arrangement of the units along the same line really helped to create this 3 dimensional illusion. 

A few other patterns that I experimented with. 

FINAL PICKS:

Project 3a: Type as Image

For this project, we had to create a series of images using one traditional typeface and making use of the different weight of the type to create our image. 

While I was thinking of what image to do, I knew I wanted to do something intricately detailed and the first thing that came to mind were shophouses. I love the details and ornamentation of shophouses in Singapore and I really wanted to try it out to see what I could come up with. 

I chose a san serif font because I wanted something more structured and angular with less “curves” to really show the details of the patterns created and I went with Avenir because it had the largest family of fonts. I love how after stretching and manipulating the type, I was actually able to get a variety of thickness in the composition. 

In my second image, I wanted to do something related to local flavour so I went with traditional nonya kuehs. 

I decided to go with a serif font for a change from the previous image. It was really fun experimenting the different typefaces and figuring out ways of incorporating it into an image.

Task 3: Design Refinement and Mock up

Based on feedback gathered in class, this was what I came up with. 

I decided to stick with a more consistent colour palette that is darker with accents of brighter colours compared to my previous one that was rather lacklustre in terms of colour choice. 

Feedback gathered from Michael was:

  • Move the hospital logo to top right
  • Align the arts and health bar with the shape of the word Explore
  • Smoothen out the curves of explore
  • Group elements at the center together to create more focus and emphasis
  • Connect the comet graphic with the pinball lever to suggest motion
  • Vary the sizes of the music notes to make it less monotonous and static
  • Introduce a ‘rocket’ to help incorporate the body text within the pinball board
  • Introduce more art elements 
  • Create more space within the pinball board, less exterior needs to be seen

Revised design

Takeaways and Reflection

I think this project really helped to push me to do a full on A2 illustrated poster and I really learned a lot from this assignment. I learned about poster layouts, colour schemes, text placement, choice of typefaces etc. I know that my poster design is not the best but I am proud of myself for being able to come out with this from the first initial draft. Moving forward, I would probably change the “NTFG” hospital logo to white to increase visibility, decrease the opacity or colour of the cloud to make it less striking, cut the space at the bottom of the poster, tighten the lines in between the slogans and probably reconsider the arrangement of the graphics in the middle to make it more “organised”. But yea overall, it was a great learning experience that I will take with me as I continue onto future projects.

Task 2: Design Exploration

The final design that I decided to continue working on was the idea of a pinball machine. My final slogan was ” Explore endless possibilities”. I thought the theme and concept of a galaxy pinball machine really fits the idea of emoting fun, adventure, exploration etc. 

My initial draft was to include the entire pinball machine in the poster. However, feedback gathered was that I did not need to show the entire machine for people to know it was a pinball machine. I should focus instead more on the actual pinball table itself. 

For my second draft, I struggled a lot with the colour palette as well as placement of objects in the centre. Hence, everything just ended up rather scattered, unfocused and messy. 

Feedback gathered:

  • stick with the darker background I did initially to fit the whole “galaxy” theme
  • change orientation of orbits
  • bring planets closer together to create more focus 
  • text “endless” and “possibilities” can be put together 
  • the frame can be expanded outwards so more attention is placed on the middle of the board 

Project 2b: Organic Type

The quote that I chose was ” Psychedelic Dreams”

When I think psychedelic, colours, trippy, static, retro, 60s era immediately comes to mind. I knew that I wanted to do something colourful with bold and bright colours, now all I needed to do was look for techniques to create my type. Here are some 60s vinyl album covers that I found online for inspiration.

Raoul Yannik  ☮ American Hippie Music ☮ Fleetwood Mac

Cream  Mishka Westell’s poster for the 1960s psych rock act, from this year’s Austin…

The Jimi Hendrix Experience & The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. 27 August 1968, Saville Theatre #London. #psychedelic  grateful dead posters - Google Search

I decided to use crayons to create that nice psychedelic mix of bright colours. Melted crayons also gives a nice textured relief as opposed to paint that would just look flat.

First, I used an xacto knife to cut out the individual letters to create a template for my individual letterings. I free handed drew a font with a “bell-bottomed” stem and structure to give it a more 60s vibe.

  

Afterwards, I melted the crayons together to create a nice blend of vibrant colours.

 

However, I accidentally misspelled “psychedelic” so I had to add in a “h” afterwards haha.

For application, I created a vinyl cover. I tried to keep the colours a little desaturated for the type to stand out more.

 

F I N A L

And this concludes project 2 🙂

R E F L E C T I O N S

I definitely learned a lot from this experience. Looking for letters in everyday spaces really trained my eye to look out for type and the letters I found really surprised me as well. Type is everywhere in the most unexpected spaces.

As for the creation of my organic type, it made me realise how important handmade typography is even with the progression of digital media. The organic-ness and real-ness of handmade typography can never be recreated by any software and it serves as a reminder to never forget the traditional mediums even as we move on to digital media. 🙂

Project 2a: Vernacular Type

Quote: ” Silence amid chaos”

Location: Gardens by the Bay

Concept: To illustrate fabricated silence within the gardens amid the chaos of a city by incorporating nature with man-made elements.  SILENCE- nature CHAOS- man-made with nature

S I L E N C E

“E”
“C”
“L”
“S”
“E”

A M I D

I wanted to keep it consistent by making it letters from the “supertree” alone.

 

Thankfully, I was able to find all the alphabets within the structure by cropping and rotating the images.

C H A O S

Final Design