The amount of work that has collected is a little overwhelming! As well as making the first draft of my 28-page book for ICODesign, I also have to finish my PPD portfolio, VCT essay, research for the VCT timeline and a pdf for the Julia project. Therefore, a trip to the library was definitely needed; here's what I'm reading...

Icodesign

Tuesday was our first meeting with Steve Lloyd and Vivek Bhatia from Icodesign to discuss our new Term 02 project brief. The simplified version of the brief is basically to create a book with content from social media on 16/02/11, using only typography. Steve and Vivek first explained their working process by showing us examples of their work, and then went on to explain and take questions about the brief, which got me feeling really inspired. As a method to help us understand what we were supposed to be doing with our content from the social media, we were given an example from one single twitter post:

'Space in typography is like time in music.'

We were split into groups of three, given photocopy credit and half an hour to create a typographic poster from this quote.

Our groups work

Steve Lloyd talking through our work

I'm now very excited for the next session with Steve and Vivek. By then we should have chosen and collected content on the subject chosen for this projects work, and thought about possible ideas and layouts for the book. Looks like I'm going to be busy over the weekend!

Making a typeface

I had some spare time today, so I had a little browse on the Internet at programs used to make typefaces. Immediately, I came across the program 'Fontographer', so I downloaded the demo as I have been interested to see what is involved in making a typeface. Obviously, as I have no experience in doing this, I wasn't really thinking at this point of the actual outcome of the typeface,  but the process involved- little did I realise how time consuming it was!

First of all, I quickly filled out a Font Creation Sheet with the Lower and Upper case alphabet, and numbers from 0-9. This was then scanned in to the computer and opened in PS.

Click on images for a closer look

The characters were then copied in to 'Fontographer' and then you had to choose the 'Auto trace' option where the tighter you set a curve fit, the more points will be placed on your glyph. By having more points, the tracing will more closely resemble the original image.

This process is quite time consuming and you can also play around with editing the points to create different shapes for your typeface. Once you have created all the glyphs you want in your typeface, your sheet should look something like the image below (annoyingly, I had created the whole alphabet but the demo version of the program only saved a certain number of glyphs.)

 When this has been done, you can generate a font file into an Open Type TT/ Windows True Type (.ttf) file, so you can generate a typeface that can be installed and used in other programs!

As I mentioned earlier, the program is only a demo version, so the maximum number of glyphs it would let you generate was only 20 characters, which was slightly annoying as I did not notice this when creating the entire alphabet. Also, the company have used watermarks over the letters when exporting it as a font, so this is the reason for the white marks on the images. However, I wasn't looking to create a brilliant typeface in the first instance, and I feel I have learned a lot from this process for future reference.

Whitechapel Gallery

John Stezaker

I went to see the John Stezaker exhibition which is currently on display at the Whitechapel Gallery today (and will be until 18/03/11.) After hearing about the exhibition from a friend, I felt I had to go and see Stezaker's work whilst I had the chance, as his practise is very similar to the 'postcard project' we had to complete at the start of term, and this was something I thoroughly enjoyed. The work displayed at the gallery showed a fascinating variety of collages using movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, giving old images a new meaning. The techniques used in his work, such as inverting and slicing, are very simple yet extremely effective. Below are a few images I took inside the gallery, the quality is compromised by the glare of the frames, however you can still see how visually pleasing the work is.

Keeping it Real: An Exhibition in Four Acts

Act 3: Mona Hatoum: Current Disturbance

'Current Disturbance' by Mona Hatoum, was another exhibition I was able to visit whilst at the Whitechapel gallery. The gallery is full of stacked wire cages. light bulbs and the sound of electric currents, which brighten at irregular times, lighting up the whole room. Although this isn't the sort of art I usually enjoy, the fact it involved both sound and vision drew you in to the piece and captivated you.
 

Can't sleep.

Type Experimentation

I've been looking back on some typographic work I experimented with a while ago. It makes me want to use more workshops and update the blog with more of this sort of stuff, so this is what I plan to do.

 

Sketching typo ideas

Using ribbon to create type

Julia exhibition

Today was the day of our formative assessment of this terms project- Julia typographic project, where we showed our final ideas in a mini exhibition. I found the day really enjoyable, and it was good to see how everyones ideas had progressed since showing our initial thoughts in the PDF presentations. Erwin and Hugo from 'Julia' provided us with some really informative and helpful feedback. The feedback our group received was really positive, and the guys from Julia really seemed to appreciate the work that Jordan and I put in to the project. I actually really enjoyed the process of formulating idea, especially in the last week where we used the letterpress room more than I ever had before, and this is something I definitely want to do more of. Below are some photos taken of a variety of final ideas from the exhibition.

Our final product- Mrs Eaves Wedding invite

Envelope for our invitation

Julia exhibition

Bell

Courir New

Microgramma

Beo Sans

B O O M

'Boom' - another experimentation with type, hand drawn

Amélie

Just finished watching Amélie for what must be at least the fifth time. The movie never fails to inspire me. The colours in the film as well as the music and scenery give me an uplifted feeling. However, it does make me feel extremely guilty and regretful that I did not continue with learning French. To be honest though, my main wish is that I thought in the same way as Amélie does. She would definitely make it big in the creative industry. 

Playing with type

I've been trying out some new techniques in my spare time whilst experimenting with type. I really like hand-rendered type, so I started off with just a few quick doodles in one of my sketchbooks. However, the result when scanned in to the computer isn't anywhere near as effective as seeing it in person, so using a few editing tools here and there, the results are a little more interesting. My favourite from this small selection is the '&' piece, which uses sweet wrappers and foil, and I think the texture created translates really well on screen.

simple line drawing

experimenting with handwriting

'&' using foil on a black surface