Studio Brief 1 - Experimentation

Experimenting with my designs

As my word was Artistic i felt that i i had to produce some experimentation with some of my letter forms, especially the designs which took on a more traditional/ hands on approach

one experimentation was for my Auto destructive design

I did have more variations but a few went missing!

As this idea was formed from people cutting different materials, i decided to try and curve an 'A' into different materials. So with this in mind, i took a knife and simply started cutting and slashing my way though a variety of materials, cardboard, plastic and other materials to see the different effects and outcomes. The overall effect was worth while but found out that plastic isn't so reliable.

I used different methods also like paint, pastels and colouring pencils to experiment with.
Using paint i wanted to create the flick on one of the terminals. As the idea was based on looking like a flick of a brush i went to and tried this method out.

This was out come. I tried different angles and attempted to achieve different strokes using different size brushes. The only problem is that i didn't have much control over the strokes and outcome therefore would be hard to achieve digitally.

With this typeface i wanted to try out a different ways to produce the block counter of the 'A'. As you can see i tried different pattern and colours. However using patterns took away the modern look and simplistic feel that i was trying to grasp.

Some digital experimentations

Working with soft colours and Gradient

Futuristic theme

I think this shows of what this design can do. Personally i don't think it's strongest when just in black.

Studio Brief 1 - Feedback #1

Presentation Feedback (initial designs)

After presenting my lettering ideas, i got some feedback even though it could of been more but that because not everyone is used to criticising other peoples work and they probably don't wish to come across rude! unless my work is that perfect, which i doubt is the case.

Some feedback was..

Go into a more modern direction

I'm glad i got this kind of feedback and the group could probably tell that i was favouring a more modern route to my designs. Also it lets me know that I'm still communication the word Artistic through a modern format.

Explore a script typeface

I suppose this was a contradiction to the first bit of feed back but someone suggested to still keep that balance and explore both routes but exploring script types to see where that could lead with my more traditional looking designs.

Start experimentation with different materials

I'm glad someone opened this subject up as i found it useful to discuss with the group about experimentation. I felt with the word 'Artistic' i was oblige to do some exploring with different materials and media to see what results i could achieve.

Explore with colour

The group suggested that try out colour with both modern and hands on designs. Even though i had already started with trying out colour, it sometimes feels a bit pointless as the final typeface would have to be in monotone.

Try out lowercase

So instead of just sticking with uppercase, they said it would be a good idea to see if some of my designs would work as body copy.

Studio Brief 1 - Lettering Ideas

Initial Ideas

After conducting my research i finally started coming up with ideas, I needed to produce around a minimal of 10 ideas for the presentation on Friday. So here are my 13 designs with explanation of the concept.

These were the basic sketches, but from these came the typefaces below.


This design was based from the famous painting "scream" from this painting i wanted to take the style of the curves and adapt this technique to my typeface. I didn't just want the cures to forms a style within the typeface,  i wanted the curve to build the structure of the letter.

This typeface is based of the art movement "ASCII art". ACII art is pretty much a style of digital art, using what seems to be a representation of pixels. I think this idea is a good suggestion of where art is going but maybe doesn't emphasise the word artistic enough.

Like the design below this was influenced by the art moment 'auto destructive". The 'A' was produced by bringing together different images of cuts and rotating them in Photoshop to form an 'A'.
I actually really love this concept of the word artistic, but am afraid it wouldn't be legible and doesn't link strongly enough with my chosen typeface Futura.

On of my favourite out of the lot this concept was simple, I wanted to achieve a futuristic/alien style, similar to the sci fi posters that I've been researching. The way i achieved this look was by removing the counter and increasing the body of the A and decreasing the descender.

Probably the simplest modification out of the lot. I rounded the corners to give a softer look and on the right terminal i added a flick to represent an artist paint brush. I wanted the overall look to give of the impression of a slick stroke of a brush that can be replicated on all letter forms.

This idea was based on a futuristic and modern look. It's closely based on my research about furniture and how i could spot different letters within objects. However i took this theory and applied it the Futura 'R' as best as i could.

This idea was pretty much straight from my imagination. I wanted to construct a typeface that was perceived as strong yet with an artistic touch. Taking this on board i added serifs to give me the legibility, structure and curved the cross bar to add an artistic side. However as i was doing alot of research into art movements, the idea had the same style of the Art movement "Art Nouveau" which wasn't intended.

This approach, i wanted to avoid a digital look by making the typeface look hand rendered. I purposely made the lines non-straight and imperfect to suggest a hands on approach. I added serifs to give the type strength against the decorative curl of the terminal and the extension of the crossbar.

Concept for this typeface was based on a modern feel and also equipment that artists use, looking at different artist equipment that i could incorporate into my typeface, I came across an artist easel that worked with the A. I increased the ascender and descender and made the width thinner, the thinner the type the more modern the design will look as a whole.

Based on block shapes and geometric structure, the only modifying i performed was by removing the counters of the "A", just by removing the counter of any letter can drastically change the look and feel of a typeface. It's amazing to see how a typeface is perceived differently just because of the removal of something so small.

There wasn't much concept for this design, i was looking for a simplistic way to create the Futura "A", but not drastically modifying or making the typeface un-readable, my main focus was  on the geometric shapes of Futura. In the end the only modification was moving the counters of the "A" to the left.

Studio Brief 1 - Research

My word was Artistic and to me Artistic can mean anything from the traditional more hands on approach to the digital side so more modern and futuristic.

Famous paintings are what most people would associate with Artistic, what comes to my mind instantly when i think of this word is an artist in his studio painting on a canvas.

I really like the styles used in both painting (above), both are by different artist but have the same wavy/groovy style, hopefully i can somehow take this style to construct my lettering in some form and use different media also.

Another route that I want to look at is different Art movement that has taken place through out history.

Futurism Movement

Modernism Movement

Modernism Movement

Minimalistic Movement

ASCII Art Movement

Auto Destructive Movement

Abstract movement

Having so many different movements opens the mind to many ideas. I could base my lettering around a number of things, I could either get influence from the style, format or to use a certain art movement to make a statement, which is what art is about, making a statement about the world around you.

At this moment I'm really interested in futuristic typeface, so hopefully i can use this interest to communicate my word in an artistic manner. When i type Artistic typeface into Goggle i would of expected to see some hand rendered lettering but instead its mainly modern and creative digital styles, which maybe suggest the world is moving away from hand on approaches like painting, printing and so on.

This is the kind of type I'm inspired by. Futuristic type is mainly used for sci fi posters and artwork.

Also all sci fi posters have the same layout, very simplistic with a lot less happening on the page suggesting an minimalistic "less is more" approach.

Another Area I'm looking in to is modern furniture. Recently Simon spoke to us about the use of type and showed us a famouse type designer speaking about how he can see type in mostly everyday object. This being said i found this talk extremely beneficial, so i began to use this to my full advantage.

What letters can you see in the first image? O, L, B, A?

What about the second one? R, N, T, K, C, S, V, L, U?

Last one? O, C, L, V, S, A..... you get the idea.

It's fascinating what a single chair can represent if you only open you mind and forget about how a typeface has been drilled into everyones mind. It's mainly about noticing what aspects make up a letter and not necessary looking at a letter as a whole.

I would like to take a modern approach to my word Artistic but i will still continue down a traditional route in order to cover all areas and approaches.

Studio Brief 1 - Introduction

Start of Alphabet Soup!

Today we got given our first Studio brief (Studio brief one). Essentially to sum the brief up, we was going to be given a random word and then combine this word along with our chosen typeface that we had previously picked to then create some ideas to start the progress of forming an alphabet. However for this brief we only had to design one letter but make many variations in order to represent our word in a 10x10cm format.

Before we could get started we had to gather in groups make a mind map of a random word that Simon would give up, essentially this task would help us with our individual words once we get started.

Our work was "Love" and we had to break this word down into many different areas as possible. I found it interesting how a group discussion can break down a single word completely and it leading to areas you wouldn't of thought about that word. Another interesting aspect was the way most people wrote their word on their sheet.

After completing this task we finally got given our own word. My word was Artistic, and here was my own spider diagram the word:

Probably not the best break down of my word but Artistic is such a broad word that it can be used and meant in so many ways.

OUGD403 - Summer Brief

In the summer I received my project brief from LCA, the brief was essentially to design the alphabet that represents you as an individual and which will also communicate things about ourselves.

At first this brief was extremely tough. I had many ideas but they all didn’t fit in with the requirement of the brief. Normally I would come up with a concept but then realise they can’t be used across all letters forms as one of the requirement set in the brief was that all letter must be apart of a style & set.

I finally came up with a better concept, using little illustration to represent my world as me. The illustrations were meant to look like a non-realistic, miniature world using 2D people and structures.

Example of one of the letter below:

So here I represented B for my love of Burgers. I used the B as a conveyor belt, which starts of with raw burgers and finishes with cook cheeseburger in buns. I didn’t want to make anything realistic as this would of taken away the fun of coming up with new ideas and I didn’t want to come across so serious, plus I wouldn’t of been able to use the colours and the shapes of the letter the way I wanted.

The typeface in all of my letters was not consistent with each other and did not run of a single typeface. Most of the letter was a variety of typeface and some were adapted to get the desired shape to fit my idea for that specific letter.

The only realisation I came across when half way through this idea was how long it took me to craft each letter especially when trying to stick to a certain style. Although I didn’t finish the whole Alphabet I will post what letters I had finished below.

F - Family

G - Golf

H - History

I - Incisive Media (work)

L - London

M - Motivation

P - Planes

Q - Ques

R - Roast

S - Striving

T - Tourist

X - Xray

D - Dogs

C - Cinema

A - Arachnophobia