Exercise – Playing With Words

Playing With Words.

This exercise was broken into 2 parts. The first was to take a list of given words, type them up in Helvetica 48pt, print and cut them out, then arrange them in a way that captures the meaning of each word. I thought this exercise would take very little time, but when it came to it, it was actually pretty hard. I found the restriction on the typeface and size very limiting. I think that I struggled with about 2/3 of the words.

In order to overcome this (and in preparation for the second part of the exercise), I wrote down what I felt I was struggling with, then made a little brainstorm for each word, to try and come up with visual ideas to represent each word.

 

I think for this part of the exercise, ‘sad’ ‘soothing’ ‘silly’ and ‘sinking’ work the best because they were obvious to me, they didn’t need a huge amount of thought to portray them in a way that characterises them.

‘Style’ ‘scholarly’ and ‘smart’ were the hardest. I think part of that was because I was trying to do something with each letter, when my view of the words were already set out in the way they were typed.

Part 2 of the exercise, was to use software (I used Photoshop) to explore different fonts, colours, sizes, filters etc to construct the meanings of each word.

This was much more fun, and I learned a lot about photoshop in the process. The freedom that I had with this in comparison to the first part made it a lot easier to characterise the meanings of the words.

I think the least successful words are ‘stoned’ ‘skimpy’ ‘squeeze’ and ‘saucy’, mostly because in comparison to most of the others, they look a bit like free clipart. Overall, I am pleased with the rest. I feel the brainstorming was very helpful in pointing me in the right direction for each visual interpretation, I also looked at a dictionary to make sure I wasn’t missing any meaning behind any of the words.

Interestingly, the words that I struggled with the most, and left until last, are the ones I am most pleased with because I think they work the best at visualising the words;

‘sophisticated’ ‘scholarly’ ‘safe’ and ‘serious’

Research Point – Typography Research

Secondary Research

This research point asks me to do some secondary research on a part of typography history that interests me.

The first thing that came to mind was kinetic typography. The use of animated text as an extension of a story or song.

Jonathan Coulton, Shop Vac.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4sOfO8Ei1g

I like how imaginative this is, and how the typed word works so well with the song. But I wanted to look into something a little more accessible, some thing with a bit more history.

I came across a website called thetypographichub.org and found article on Tart Cards, from the write up, it sounded like they would be an interesting subject, but I didn’t find anything particularly distinctive about the type.

So I went further back, to Calligraphy. I liked the idea of monks scribing bibles, and the skill and patience involved.

Brief history:

Western Calligraphy (from Greek κάλλος kallos “beauty” + γραφή graphẽ “writing”) is the art of writing.[1] A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is “the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner.”[2] The story of writing is one of aesthetic development framed within the technical skills, transmission speed(s) and material limitations of a person, time and place.[3] A style of writing is described as a script, hand or alphabet.[4]

Calligraphy ranges from functional hand lettered inscriptions and designs to fine art pieces where the abstract expression of the handwritten mark may or may not supersede the legibility of the letters.[5] Classical calligraphy differs from typography and non-classical hand-lettering, though a calligrapher may create all of these; characters are historically disciplined yet fluid and spontaneous, improvised at the moment of writing.[6]

Calligraphy continues to flourish in the forms of wedding and event invitations, font design/ typography, original hand-lettered logo design, religious art, various announcements/ graphic design/ commissioned calligraphic art, cut stone inscriptions and memorial documents. Also props and moving images for film and television, testimonials, birth and death certificates/maps, and other works involving writing.[7]

 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Another area that interested me was graffiti. Not so much the early 90’s Fresh Prince of Belair style, but the art form it has become since then. I also like the basic scrawled messages that people with a message create.

Brief history:

Graffiti is writing or drawings that have been scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place.[1] Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and it has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.[2]

In modern times, paint (particularly spray paint) and marker pens have become the most commonly used graffiti materials. In most countries, marking or painting property without the property owner’s consent is considered defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime.

Graffiti may also express underlying social and political messages and a whole genre of artistic expression is based upon spray paint graffiti styles. Within hip hop culture, graffiti has evolved alongside hip hop music, b-boying, and other elements.[3] Unrelated to hip-hop graffiti, gangs use their own form of graffiti to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities.

Controversies that surround graffiti continue to create disagreement amongst city officials, law enforcement, and writers who wish to display and appreciate work in public locations. There are many different types and styles of graffiti and it is a rapidly developing art form whose value is highly contested and reviled by many authorities while also subject to protection, sometimes within the same jurisdiction.

 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The last area I wanted to look at was Tattoo script. Aside from being a strong interest of mine,  I think that the three areas cross over frequently, with the latter two becoming an art form over the last few years.

Tattoo by Ben Doran

Below is an example of how the three cross over and can work together.

By Alex Young

I looked at artists in each field.

The first person of interest I found was a graffiti artist called Mister Cartoon, who also worked as a tattoo artist. He started as a graffiti artist in the 80’s, his reputation grew and he branched into other art forms. Below is the outside of his LA tattoo studio.

Luca Barcellona

Barcellona also started as a street artist, he went to college but got disheartened as digital work took over. He eventually returned to education and is now a free lance Calligrapher and Graphic Designer. I think that his work is beautiful, it still holds onto his days as a street artist, yet his honed skill is clear in his work.

John Stevens

Stevens is more of a traditional Calligrapher, although his work doesn’t seem to flow as naturally as Barcellona’s.

BJ Betts

Betts is a tattoo artist, known for his lettering / script work.

His ability to harness so many different styles of lettering, really emphasises how Calligraphy, Graffiti and Tattooing are more closely linked than you’d initially think.

They are all handcrafted skills that take time and dedication to master.

Assignment – Colour Me

COLOUR ME

This assignment draws on what I have learnt so far. Working with visual dynamics, colour and visual language.

My brief was to create an A3 poster that celebrates a colour of my choice.  The colour needs to have meaning to me, and I need to explore this and what it means to other people.

I can only use my chosen colour, it’s complimentary colour, black and white.

YELLOW

My choice of colour was easy. I chose Yellow because of the the song ‘Yellow’ by Coldplay. The song has sentimental meaning to me although the colour itself is far from my favourite, which posed a challenge.

Yellow is a very happy colour – Like sunshine and buttercups! It is also the dominant colour used in Stefan Sagmeister’s “The Happy Show”

http://thehappyshow.tumblr.com

There was also a rare point of ‘excited optimism’ in Van Gogh’s life, where he created his Sunflowers. He painted 7 different versions, to him, Yellow was a symbol of happiness.

  

First, I decided to brainstorm ‘Yellow’, I used google as well to make sure that there wasn’t anything obvious that I had missed. At this point I felt that I could go down one of two routes:

1.Use any yellow object I could think of.

2.Use the lyrics, either as text or to come up with imagery relevant to the song.

After doing the photomontage exercise, I wanted to try and use that format again, as it gives a lot of freedom (as does the brief)

What does Yellow mean to others?

I wanted to create an image based on what yellow means to other people, so as to not blinker my final piece without considering other options.

This is a very happy picture, I like it a lot. The water in the background, came from the lyrics “I swam across”, I changed the colour to purple to fit in with the brief. My main issue with this, is that it just doesn’t seem relevant.

I decided to chose images to put together that I liked rather than using everything I could find. I chose a burning star and my favourite flower. I don’t really think I achieved anything here. The first of the two is ok, very yellow, but the second looks like I put an omelette on a flower. Again, it was a very yellow image, but there doesn’t seem to be much reasoning behind it.

Lyrics

Next, I looked at the lyrics. There are a few different interpretations of what the song itself may be about, one theory is that Chris Martin wrote it about his dying mother, another is that it is a simple love song and he got the title from a Yellow Pages book that was in the studio… This hearsay isn’t very conclusive, so it makes sense to me to stick with my own thoughts  – That it’s a love song.

Maybe I could just use the text. But once I had put this together, it didn’t look anything like a celebration of the colour yellow.

If I wanted to use the lyrics, I needed to be a bit more imaginative and bold, so that at first glance, the dominant colour was yellow.

I decided to use stars, notes, water, hearts, water and a few lyrics.

I wanted to use a starry night sky as part of the background as opposed to using 5 point stars. It’s more fitting to the lyrics and I also wanted to create a flowing/organic image.

I changed the tints and shades of the hearts to give it a bit more depth. Overall it’s a nice image, but looks a bit like a generic greetings card. I think the problem is the style of heart I chose.

I tried using the haribo love hearts. Using an image of them randomly piled up gave a more irregular feel to it. I also put the stars at the front, so that they were more pronounced. I really like this image, but even with the top layer being as transparent as it is, I couldn’t get away with, the dominant colour being yellow.

Next I decided to try something, somewhere in between the last two images.

I added a poster edges filter to this to try and create a vintage/worn effect. I like the way it accentuates the edges of the text, and adds contrast to the yellow and purple areas.

At this point, I thought that I was happy with this as my final piece, but before uploading this assignment was when I found the research point on Graphic Designers that interest me. It changed my view on what I had created so far and I felt that I needed to design something else. Something that at least started to break down my current and limiting thinking of ‘everything in it’s place’. I wanted to attempt something a little more carefree. This is something that I think will actually be long process for me, but I’ll start with this.

“Don’t mistake legibility for communication” – David Carson

I decided that typed font was too uniform for what I was trying to achieve at this point, so used crayons, felt tips and highlighters to do the text by hand, scanned it and layered it over the collage background. I included some little sketches, from earlier designs, but tried to hide/merge them a little bit.

Handwritten Version

I looked back over some of Carson’s work, and this piece doesn’t emulate it in any way, so I looked back over the lyrics. I had previously skipped over the part ‘I drew a line’ thinking that it was not visually strong enough to pursue, but it’s a love song – he didn’t say it was a straight line, so I looked for images of hearts in the sand (the video was shot on a beach)

At this point, I knew that I needed to use the images of sand, stars and readdress the text. I used a mixture of handwritten text and typed text, making an effort to acknowledge Carson’s style in how I put it all together.

After choosing a specific style in which to do this, I realised that it was a bigger challenge that I initially thought. I had to build up a lot of layers to get back to the aim of achieving the brief (yellow being the dominant colour), because I was so set on trying to work in the direction of something similar to David Carson’s work that I’d got side tracked.

Even then, I’d say that the dominant colour was purple, so I added a faint yellow version of the background image, keeping the translucent star lit sky in place. The different shades of yellow, the purple drop shadows and strokes worked better than I had anticipated so I removed the purple sand heart altogether.

Final Piece

I do have a lot more to learn about visual communication and honing in on a style, but this unit has been the biggest step for me so far. Trying to work towards someone else’s style is quite a challenge, especially when his whole approach is essentially the complete opposite to mine.

Discarded Idea:

I thought about the Abstract Cities exercise, and wanted to see if it would translate, with just blocks of colour. I used different shades of yellow, and purple to create contrast and depth. I don’t like it, I’m still struggling to make a connection with the idea of abstract art.

Exercise – Photomontage

Photomontage

The brief is to create a montage or collage on a current or political issue that I feel strongly about. I needed to collect images from newspapers/magazines/online etc, to create a new meaning out of the images, and get my point across.

I spent a long time at the start of this process trying to work out which direction a I was going to go in with it. I rarely keep up to date with current affairs, because I find the media’s portrayal of it misleading and biased. There seems to be a trend for draining the last drop out of even the most mundane item. Beating a dead horse… It finally occurred to me, that this was something that I felt strongly about!

  

The overall impression I have of ‘the news’ in any format is that it is as much propaganda as it is informative, which reminded me of a  WW2 recruitment poster that was up  in my old school. I thought that this kind of blatent scare mongering may be a route to take with my montage.

Another thing that came to mind whilst reading the brief was ransom letters made from newspaper clippings.

I also wanted to see what other people had created by taking images and changing their meanings using collage and montage.

This is one that stuck out the most, because it sends the message that I want to portray.

John Heartfield –

“Whoever reads bourgeois newspapers becomes blind and deaf. Away with these stultifying bandages.”

Dadaism seems to be the most striking art movement, for portraying political issues, so this style was what I was aiming for.

At this point I decided that I wanted to read through and collect images and headlines that I could use to create an image that told the viewers that the media was out to scare them – That this small bit of knowledge could empower and encourage people to think for themselves, and stop living in fear.

My first attempt was a bit vague, and although I knew what it meant, it wasn’t that clear to the viewer.

I felt that I needed to be more specific with my image. What exactly are they scaring you about? In my opinion, the most prominent issues are:

SEX: Sex tips or Scandals? What is or isn’t ‘acceptable’? The sexualisation of women – Womens’ rights. And what about men?!

BODY IMAGE: ‘Skinny’ bikini bodies, but ‘curves’ are ok? Are ‘fat’ people allowed to be happy? It’s terribly contradicting, and sends confusing messages to people that aspire to the unobtainable.

POLITICIANS: They break promises, everyone is screwed.

I tried to create an image about politicians, but in reality, I know very little about politics. And although I’m certain that they don’t play fair, I’m under the strong view that they can’t please everyone, they are always going to be criticised. So I just created a couple of images that encompassed things that the government had been in the news for recently.

   

Of all of the pieces I collected, shockingly, the most noticeable subject matter was sex. (Proof that media, on an average weekday has little to talk about)

The second image here is a little better thought out. The ‘have sex for cash’ image is smaller, showing more of the girl, that and the hand, pointing to her boob, emphasises my point of contradiction, drawing your eye to her, whilst the words tell you that it’s bad.

   

I think the most important message to me was that of body image, and the fact that media has profound affect on both mental and physical health with it’s harsh, mixed and relentless messages on how we should look and what we should do in order to achieve it.

FINAL PIECE

I added a few more contrasting images to my final piece.

It aims to tell of how media wants us to consume, whilst maintaining an unrealistic physical appearance – BUT – You cannot be too skinny – Or too fat – If you are too fat, then you can just consume some pills… It’s a relentless vicious circle, that gives a confusing and contradicting message.

This exercise helped me to really think about what I was aiming for, which was easy to lose sight of when surrounded by so many images! Also, the trial and error helped me progress with how I work with photoshop.

I think that montage/collage creates very strong imagery, and I enjoyed doing it.

Research Point – Reviewing my Visual Diary

Reviewing my Visual Diary

Looking back over my diary after completing other exercises and the other research point, it looks quite empty.

On the up side, I’m confident that I’ve learned a little more about both my styles and preferences and those of other people, which has inspired me to broaden my horizons.

I am going to continue to collect images in my diary, and have set a reminder in my calendar to review it and see how it develops over the next 4-6 weeks…

Research Point – Graphic Designers

Graphic Designers that interest me.

Frustratingly, I managed to miss this research point until I went back to reread the unit before submitting it. After looking into people that interest me, I feel that their influence would have had an impact on my work throughout the Visual Language unit. That said, I found that I learned a lot about how I view/process my own visual language and preferences.

DAVID CARSON

David Carson (born September 8, 1954) is an American graphic designer, art director and surfer. He is best known for his innovative magazine design, and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun, in which he employed much of the typographic and layout style for which he is known. In particular, his widely imitated aesthetic defined the so-called “grunge typography” era.

– From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

David Carson is, by far, my favourite Graphic Designer to date. His use of different types of visual communications and ‘experimental typography’ is eye catching and inspirational. After watching his TED talk and learning that he has no design training – that his work is based on his views on life and that he aims to create an emotional response from his work, my initial view of him and his work was reinforced.

  (http://www.ted.com/talks/david_carson_on_design.html)

I feel that typography is a very powerful way to communicate, which was the initial reason for me researching him. (I’m aware of other designers that are known for typography, but I wanted to make sure that I didn’t get caught up in that one area).

The next thing that I liked about Carson’s work, is that collage/montage features quite heavily and it works in a way that I hadn’t considered before, in that it can look quite organic, and that there are no limits in the mediums that can be used. He doesn’t seem to have set himself any boundaries.

I also think that this ^ is a valuable thing to bare in mind…

STEFAN SAGMEISTER

Stefan Sagmeister (born August 6, 1962 in Bregenz, Austria) is a New York-based graphic designer and typographer. He has his own design firm—Sagmeister & Walsh Inc.—in New York City. He has designed album covers for Lou Reed, OK Go, The Rolling Stones, David Byrne, Aerosmith and Pat Metheny.

– From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Although I had come across Stefan Sagmeister before, it wasn’t until I saw his name under David Carson’s on the TED talks website, that I decided to spend more time looking at his work. He is another designer that looks to evoke emotion as opposed to realising it. His work, ‘Things I have learned in my life so far’ is an example of work that he feels is important and is easy to relate to. He is another designer that uses any materials to create a message or piece of work.

I also like the fact that there is positivity and happiness in this, and ‘The Happy Show’ work.

http://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_shares_happy_design.html

Sketchbook notes