ADVANCED TYPOGRAPHY - EXERCISES

27/9/2018 - 17/9/2018  (Week 1 - Week 4 )

Ng Shu Zhi (0327158)

Typography - Exercises

LECTURES

Week 1: On our first lecture, we were to make groups of 4 people and make a presentation about 1 typographic layout system from the 8. Grids, Radial, Modular, Dilational, Random, Repetition, Bilateral and Axial. My group was assigned to do the Axial typographic system.



Week 2: [ We had a big tutor critique session ]

Week 3: [Public Holiday]

Week 4: [Public Holiday]

Week 5: We had a lecture on the history of typography and 5 design influencers


INSTRUCTIONS

WORK
Week 1

fig 3.1 pdf of typographic system

fig 3.2 1-8 thumbnails of my designs for the systems

fig 3.3 9-16 thumbnails of my designs for the system

fig 3.4 1-4 of thumbnails of my new designs (Dilatational and Grid)

fig 3.5 5-8 of thumbnails of my new designs (Bilateral and Axial)

fig 3.6 9-12 of thumbnails of my new designs (Radial and Random)

fig 3.7 13-16 of thumbnails of my new designs (Transtional and Modular)

 pdf of my final designs for the typographic systems

fig 3.10 the image I picked for this week's exercise pt 1. It was a Catheral I took a picture of while I was in England.

fig 3.11 drawing the lines on the image

fig 3.12 finding the letters in the image and I found the letters: W, t, o, H and i.

fig 3.13 Refining the letters to make it clearer to see what letter forms they are.

fig 3.14 Iteration of the capital letter W

fig 3.15 Iteration of the capital letter H

fig 3.16 Iteration of the letter o

fig 3.17 Iteration of the letter i

fig 3.18 Iteration of the letter t

fig 3.19 I added more lines to the image to get more widths for my letters to add character to them.

fig 3.20 The letters I found had also changed after adding more lines to give more width and character to my letters. My letter was based off a gothic church so I tried to look for the any shape that seemed like it has a serif on it.

fig 3.21 Taking out the letters and putting them on a baseline. The letters I had found were Y, r, o, I and H

fig 3.22 first part to refining the letters for them to have more a more obvious shape

fig 3.23 Final result of refining

Week 4

fig 3.24 My piece for our exercise pt 2 where I replaced the dog in the image with the letters D,o,g after erasing the actual dog with content aware fill. I thought maybe the reflection of the dog could still give a hint to the actual dog so I didn't try to replace it with a flipped over version of the letters.

fig 3.25 Another design using the same image but trying to use the radial typographic system

fig 3.26 An image I took at the beach of Bali where there were many dogs which was quite a surprise to me so I thought to use it in this exercise

fig 3.27 The new image I'm using for this exercise (taken from internet) as the pictures I posses aren't interesting or good quality enough.

fig 3.28 The first design I made where I wanted to use a mixture of implied axis from the man's arms' posture and radial system.

fig 3.29 Second design using more of the radial system and I emphasized the direction from where he jumped from.

fig 3.30 Third design using the same idea from the second design but curving the words to keep a consistent theme of jumping and the nature of a jump.

FEEDBACK

Week 2: General feedback: Hierarchy, readability and abiding the system is important even when designing a typographic art piece. Good design also relieves space for the viewer's imagination. Specific Feedback: Mr Vinod said my Random designs were okay and I were to fix my grid designs to show a hierarchy of text by changing the sizing I gave it.

Week 3 : (Public Holiday)

Week 4: (Public Holiday)

Week 5: General feedback: Putting images is important in helping the audience understand, put time periods, we should stand up while giving presentations, collaborate with each other and help each other during the presentation instead of just do our parts, and understand and explain our parts. Specific feedback: My letters need more character in them as now they are only lines without refining them and for exercise pt2. I should have the typographic design compliment the image and work together to make it look like a good typographic piece.

REFLECTION
Experience
Week 1: The experience for the first week was much different from our earlier semester where we had to give the lecture for this topic on typographic systems. It was a surprise to all of us but not something we weren't familiar with since we already had to do this in Sem 1 with design principles, the only thing that was a bit jarring was the little amount of time given to us to make the slides and present about 45 minutes after getting the topic.

Week 2: For this class we had a big tutorial where the whole class listened and observed other's works with Mr. Vinod giving feedback and critiques of our work. He also gave us some good advice and feedback for our works.

Week 3: Finding letters from images was quite fun, like in kindergarten when kids have to find certain things in images.

Week 4: This one proved to be a bit harder than I thought because I as inspired by the Moby Dick example image in the MIB, I tried to do something similar but to actually have the letters fit onto the original object is quite hard.

Week 5: Continuing to refine my letters from an image was a bit tricky while trying to keep the characteristic from the image.

Observation
Week 1: There was little time to understand the topic we were given to present about but most of the topics were simple to understand since they were quite straight forward like the Axial system and Bilateral systems.

Week 2: We had a large group tutoring with Mr. Vinod critiquing our works, giving feedback, pointing out good designs and giving advice for composition for our designs.

Week 3: I found more than 5 letters in the image after drawing the lines.

Week 4: Trying to fit letter forms onto an object is more challenging than I thought if I cannot distort the letters.

Week 5: I have to be very analytical for the type of font I try to make so that it can be readable but still maintain the original integrity of the theme/image it came from.

Findings
Week 1: I found that this way of presenting is helpful to understand since we're processing and translating knowledge into a presentation but maybe if just given more time for us to fully understand, it would've been better. I also found that little thumbnails are important while expressing visual layouts such as these.

Week 2: Having a big group tutor session was helpful as we got to see other's works and learn which are the good designs to be helpful examples to us.

Week 3: Finding letters in images is very easy so it makes me wonder if letters are made based off an object's silhouette since chinese characters are based off drawings.

Week 4: I found that trying to fit letters into the shape of an image is quite hard without having to distort the letters but it is quite interesting to try and design combining the use of visuals onto an image.

Week 5: I found out trying to find letters in an image gets harder the more complicated the image is so I should sharpen my eyes to be able to spot more letter forms in everyday objects as that's how fonts are designed sometimes.
FURTHER READING
Week 1

fig 6.1 FONT: classic type faces for contemporary graphic design

I got this book because looking through it, it showed many designs and after learning about the different systems, it was easier to recognise each system and use this book as reference to the first exercise

 fig 6.2 the title is used as graphics in the back of some extra text by the front

 fig 6.3 The usage of different types on one design can make something look interesting but of course the types have to have some similarity

fig 6.4 The usage of different sizing to grab attention

fig 6.5 I thought this random layout was edgy and eye catching, not my favorite but still eye catching by how random it is.

fig 6.6  I liked the randomness but it still has a neat system to it and gives it an overall feel

fig 6.7 I thought maybe this could be used for the modular system with the grid like designs and the information can be arranged around to this but it would still look fine

Week 2 & 3

fig 6.8 The 3D Type Book

For this semester I think I would have to focus a bit more on designs using typography  

fig 6.9 the use of contrast to differenciate 2 different sentences is quite interesting.

fig 6.10 This design's usage of different axis on it's design and different widths to make a 3D piece where I find it would be interesting to attempt making it in Ai with using different tones and overlapping text.

Week 4

fig 6.11 The Evolution of Typography: A Brief History

In this article I learned about the history of typography. The character's evolution from hieroglyphics to Pheonician to alphabets to scripts to print, evolving into our modern scripts.