Shofwa Alyadiena / 0350019
LECTURES
Week 6
Our brief started with a chill session. Mr. Vinod and Mr. Charles spent the first hour to listen to our thoughts and needs after six weeks. To recap from last week, the requirements for this task is to keep the colors on a grayscale and have no pictures, all while only using the same ten typefaces from our previous works. We're allowed to express the words in illustrator but final designs must be in InDesign. We then moved on to reviewing our works.
INSTRUCTIONS
Task 2: Text Expression and Communication
Before we digitize this task, I read the texts that were given to us. I chose to do my task by doing "Visual Communicators, Unite!" text. I believe that as a student in design I could relate to the text better, since it is a form of visual communication.
Sketches and brainstorming are always necessary, so I came up with three ideas.
Sketch (a) was designed to look like a staircase. It was the very first Idea I had, and unfortunately doesn't express the title at all. It was really a practice in understanding how the layout will be.
Sketch (b) was focused entirely on the text expression, which is to visualize an eye seeing the word 'Visual' by using figure 1.2 as the base idea. I added another line below 'communicators' as it looked like an open mouth, which is another way of communicating.
Sketch (c) is an attempt at applying the design principle of 'unity'. The text is surrounding the title, to give the illusion of everything uniting. The downside is that no graphical elements were used at all, and "visual communicators" is ironically divided by "unite!". However, in my opinion is was the strongest layout so I worked on making that one.
To get a good idea of how everything will look, I placed them all in InDesign before proceeding. Originally the length of the text was about 40-50 per row, so I made it smaller. However, making it smaller messed up the placement and it didn't fit the layout I was hoping for, so I kept it at 40-50 per row.
During the resizing process, I realize that creating the expression in ADobe Illustrator was unnecessary, so I placed it on InDesign immediately. Following the sketch, I placed it in the middle bottom between the two pages.
When that was over, I played with the leading. I settled with 12 points. After the leading was established I realize the text was filling up more space, so I edited it to be smaller (10.5 pts) and the characters per row became 45-55.
Last thing I did for my first draft is applying the cross alignment to finalize it. As instructed, I matched the alignment guide with the leading at 12 points, but it didn't seem to work. After a lot of experimenting, It was able to match with both sizes being 12.6 points.
In the meeting for week 6 Mr. Vinod says I was more focused on figuring out how the title with expressions would fit in the layout of the text. I realize the flaws in my process and decided it would be good to start over. I worked on the expression in Illustrator. Luckily, I was getting the hang of it after weeks has passed.
The first step in re-doing my text expression is by taking references. I grabbed some magazines that were laid around the house to get some visual research going.
By looking at these magazines, I notice 'NOOR' magazines tend to emphasize the words they want to focus on. The expression used for figure 1.7 in the word "Feel Peaceful" is by bolding and italicising the words, it doesn't actually express the meaning of the word. Still on the topic of figure 1.7, they also made the title 'Question and Answers' symbolized with just "Q" and "A" behind the text itself, and uses lines to indicate that the text and title is related.
Taking examples from National Geographic's magazine 'Weird but True', the layout looks messy, but is grouped by colors. The title itself uses graphics (such as the flower in 'grow'). I found the word 'awes8me' an interesting concept, since it doesn't express the word 'awesome' itself, but explains without words that there are 8 examples from what it wants to show.
I started working on the expressions for the word 'Unite'.
The idea behind these expressions are simple, all designs aim to unite letters with one another. I ended up choosing the second design (lines drawn into the letter 'I') as there was a lot of potential to adding designs around it.
First things first, I placed the expression in InDesign to get a better look. Every export from Illustrator didn't work well so I recreated the expression manually. I added the rest of the title below and above the word 'Unite' by following the flow of how I read.
Before resuming the remake, I experimented with more layouts using the squares.
I liked the very first better, but it wasn't so easy to tell what is the heading, and it's fairly similar to my first draft, which wasn't at all dynamic.
Following my decision after visualizing the simplified layout, I worked on the rearrangement.
Before I move on to cross aligning, I played around with the layouts and sizes. I added more graphical elements (the lines), inspired by the telephone cups people used to make to further emphasize the communication element. The cups are used to replace the letter 'V' in Visual and are placed nearby sub-headings to make it seem as if the subheadings are dialogues being sent through the imaginary telephone cup.
Finally, I moved on to cross aligning the texts. Following the instructions, I matched the sizes with the leading I applied. After doing so I realized many things were outside the border of the margins, so I adjusted them to fit inside it.
Just as I was about to export the final results, I realize many texts were protruding. I haven't done the ragging earlier, which I then quickly started on.
As I returned to editor mode, a guide appeared. I'm not sure what it was or what I clicked that showed it. Once the ragging was completed, everything seems to be in order.
Final Design
Heading:
Feedbacks
General Feedback
The general feedback that I gathered from the meeting is to focus on type expressions for the title we chose. We were mostly focused on establishing the layout before properly exploring the expressions we can create from the text given to us. Furthermore, we should learn and understand how to make it obvious that the text is connected to the title.
Specific Feedback
Specifically, I was told I didn't experiment enough. My layouts were still within the comfort zone which lacks creativity. To say it briefly, the original text expression I created was boring. Other than the layout, the type expression wasn't sufficient, as it's just text without any expression actually added.
Reflections
Experience
Observations
Findings
I found out from referring to the magazines around my house that every magazine expresses texts differently, and most of its purpose is to connect content with title or emphasis.
Further Readings
Form and Communication' Book Cover
by Rob Carter
Reading from a few pages, I began to understand the important of space in typography. Seeing from the example in figure 3.2, the letter 'T' looks as if it's moving when adding a space that makes it off-center. changing the angle of the letter creates an illusion of it toppling over. this is a suitable example I could have used in the process of learning about type expressions.
However, what really caught my eye is the proportions in figure 3.3. The page offers examples of structure by taking away pieces from a square. Some layouts are better than the others, represented by the one square with a diagonal orange line crossing the bigger rectangle. It's named 'The Golden Rectangle', which is related to how it's the pattern that is involved in the golden ratio.
Comments
Post a Comment