Category: Student work

Initial Transmogrify

For Kim’s project, I created a monogram of my initials in the Garamond font. I experimented with layering and played with the different interactions between the letter forms. I initially came up with this design:

 

I decided to experiment further and explore flipping the letter forms. This almost removed the readable quality of the letters and created more of a visual image.

 

 

Finally I wanted to include colour and add some depth to my piece. I decided to add a drop shadow as this would also incorporate the dimension I wanted.

 

 

 

The two-tone drop shadow also adds an almost ‘trippy’ element to my outcome, further distorting the letter forms and creating an eye-catching image. However, I decided that the black background was too harsh in contrast to the white. I changed this to blue, which created a more monochromatic outcome. Overall, this made a more cohesive image. To illustrate the journey that I undertook during this project, I created a short video almost like a digital flip book, with my images in order.

MY VIDEO:

FullSizeRender 

Variety in our everyday life

Whilst doing this project, I realised how much of lettering is present in our day to day lives. The different signs, logos and numerals we see around us inform, educate or inspire us in one way or another whether it be through an instructing sign, a warning, or a form of merchandising. Although most of the time it is clear what a sign means, sometimes we need to see the scene around it (the context) in order for us to understand the true meaning. After photographing the pictures, I categorised all the images into 4 sets of groups through collages. Each group follows a set of rules to communicate the intended meaning effectively to the public.

I noticed that especially during this unprecedented time due to the virus, we have a large variety of signs and lettering instructing  us to behave in a certain way. To show this in my collage, if you see below, I have accentuated these specific images by editing the ordinary instructive signs we see in our day to day lives black and white. Nearly all these signs use imperative verbs to not only convey the message across, but to highlight the significance and importance. This is also done through the use of the vibrant, pigmented colours. The font used is predominantly sans serif which makes it easier for the public to read. This conveniency is vital as these signs would usually be placed in any fast-paced environment (e.g. shopping centre, restaurant) where people should be able to understand the message without any hesitation or confusion.

Below are some more of the collages I created with the category labelled.

“Instructing”

 

“Temporary”

 

“Branding”

 

“Advertising/Merchandising”

 

 

Labyrinth

Labyrinth: a family moves into a house with unexpected spatial characteristics. The rooms keep shifting position every time a door is opened. The family members are trapped inside the house and start a journey to find the front door. While they keep moving from one room to the next, they discover that they are not the only ones lost in the impossibly infinite labyrinth of the house.

I shaped first half of the book in the outline of a house which can be seen to have a door and a variety of stairs to create the labyrinth affect in the background. I felt that my front page in the first page to the story and is a good way of visualising telling the story.

Here the inside of my book can be seen, on the left is this idea of stairs created out of the books pages, all being connected to a single door. Representing the idea of once the door closes another room appears on the other side. In a way the door represents a portal.

on the right hand page Is the outline of a door getting smaller and smaller as you go though the pages, representing the never ending of this house. I burned the stairs on this page to show them disappearing as you go through the each door.

 

Labyrinth book narrative

The brief

A client has written a novel and asks you to work on the design of the book. He wants you to develop a concept that enhances and brings forward the visual dimension of the story. He does not request a traditional design, but a book that helps to develop the narrative through its form and materiality

Labyrinth: a family moves into a house with unexpected spatial characteristics. The rooms keep shifting position every time a door is opened. The family members are trapped inside the house and start a journey to find the front door. While they keep moving from one room to the next, they discover that they are not the only ones lost in the impossibly infinite labyrinth of the house.

I first started by finding a template of a labyrinth and my initial plan was to cut out sentences of the book and place them around the labyrinth to create a 3D effect. As the labyrinth gets smaller the sentences get shorter which  represents their journey to find the front door. This however didn’t go to plan. Therefore I thought of a second plan which used the pages in the book to get deeper into the labyrinth.

Never ending narrative

Brief:

A client has written a novel and asks you to work on the design of the book. He wants you to develop a concept that enhances and brings forward the visual dimension of the story. He does not request a traditional design, but a book that helps to develop the narrative through its form and materiality.

  • Loop: a man picks up a novel and starts reading it sitting in an armchair with his back to the door. He sinks into the novel, in which a man and a woman meet in a cabin. They are lovers, but their attention is focused on murder: the man is going to kill the woman’s husband. Following her instructions, knife in hand, the man goes inside and sees his victim: a man who is sitting in an armchair reading a book with his back to the door.

Process:

  • I had the idea to glue the two covers together to simulate the never ending narrative of this storyline, then to draw or cut an impression of the man reading in his chair throughout the pages. However I found that the binding of this book was quite strong and so rather than the pages spraying open evenly in a circular way when the covers were pulled together, instead few of the pages followed. This was not the desired effect so I experimented with removing the cover and slicing strips down the glue of the spine. I hoped this would give it more flexibility and allow the pages to look like one continuous loop. This proved quite difficult to execute and drastically weakened the spine so I decided to adjust the design.
  • Instead I started to cut away the pages to develop a portrait of a mans face. At first I was cutting very carefully a group of pages at a time. But this meant I  had the same design running through the whole book. I quickly realised I could easily carve the pages, as if shaving cuttings off of wood, which made the face more 3D. I played with a few different ways of bringing shape and definition to the face also through using layers.
  • My initial idea imagined a complete head cut out to look 3D, so I had to keep in mind that this would be more of a slither of the centre line down a mans face. Being the section of the face with many main features I was confident that the shape would still be legible and reflect that of a portrait. My ability to bring in definition and round shape was a slightly limited due the thickness/thinness of the book. To adapt to this I cut some block layers from the front and the back of the book for more stark and abrupt shaping. I really like the effect of this, especially when it is played with the light.

Reflections:

I really like how the light plays with the shapes of the pages in this book to enhance the design and mirror the storyline. As each page is turned, the shadows echo the message of the book and the intended design. To further this design I would like to explore the impact of colour and shading applied directly to the pages to make each page turn more intriguing to turn. This would also aid in bringing more detailed definition to the structure of the face.

Looped Labyrinth:

  

In today’s project, I attempted a few iterations of ideas. My first idea was to create some kind of pop up labyrinth/castle through a template I acquired through https://www.youtube.com/c/JRpapercraft with a few of my own ideas to represent the family lost in the house presented in the labyrinth story. However, the creation of the said idea was scrapped as the detail needed for the castle was too great and I did not have the correct resources to finish the job (my knife for precision cutting was to blunt and I had no tweezers).

Never the less I came up with the idea of merging both the labyrinth story and the loop story together to create a trapped like event where the characters of the novel are trapped in the pages of the book – as were the family in the labyrinth – and the supernatural feel of the book sucking the character into the pages – as was the man in the loop. The eyes at the end of the portal are also used to represent the discovery “that they are not the only ones lost in the impossibly infinite labyrinth” as written in the labyrinth story.

Obsessive behaviour

Can a book tell a story without words? Or do we need the words in order to call it a book? During my experimentation I decided to let the physical book take you on the journey of someone who’s becoming obsessive.

I know we’re all told “don’t judge a book by its cover” and still we cannot help but do so. Similar to a child we tend to have a more idealistic view about our own choices, e.g. smoking, so why do we start? Like the child we’re attracted to the bright, the colourful and “cool” things which often includes peer pressure and wrong choices. This is why the cover of my book has been drawn in a more child like manor, misleading us to what comes next.

 

Once you start on your obsessive habitual behaviour you know it’ll get worse but you still go on. In order to represent this within my book I made my pages as noisy as I could, the further you go the more noise the pages make when you turn them. In order to do so I poured water over pages and dried them, I scrunched up some pages and glued others together so the book really rustles as you turn the pages.

 

Not only does the book get physically noisier but it also gets more visibly chaotic. Much like any obsession The further you go the worse it gets, it starts to consume and destroy.

 

In the end it will tear whole chunks out of a person and leave scars and bruises… I wanted the book to show this so I ripped out pages, tore others apart, as well as (under my flatmates’ supervision) burned holes into random pages. Singed and burned others and made paint splatters and scribbled on the pages and edges, especially towards the end of the book.

The maze beyond the gaze

In todays project presented by Berta Ferrer and Kim Marshall, we explored concepts of what a book is and what makes a book? Whether it be how it looks, the content it withholds or another aspect. We discussed how it doesn’t have to abide by the traditional format that we are used to seeing in our everyday lives. Through exploring various artists such as  Tom Philips and Alberto Hanadez, we were given an insight, which provided us with some inspiration, on how to transform our books narrative from ordinary words on paper, into a visual  narrative.  Alberto Hanadez for example, displayed the novella, Jekyll and Hyde’s narrative by dividing the core pages in to two, visually representing the split identity of the main character.

I decided to explore the theme of ‘Labyrinth’ by sketching ideas on how to represent the narrative of a family moving into an ordinary house and how they uncover it isn’t what it seems. I played with the idea of making the cover into an actual house, which I did through using a craft knife to shape a roof and windows, along with a physically operating door. I decided to incorporate the physically operated door and gaps in the cover to allow the audience to take a peak into the house and see it isn’t that of a normal one. When the door is opened, you are met with a pop up speech bubble which comes from the back of the book, displaying that the family is right at the back, beginning their journey through this maze and calling out for help. To display the idea that through every door they enter, the rooms change, I created layers of pages which get deeper and smaller, displaying a never-ending affect.

 

 

The staircase to success

The main concept of this was that the front page and cover would have a clear and meaningful design, showing the route or the stairway to success. Which is what the brief or Staircase story states. That a man arrived at a sanatorium, as he has an unnamed disease. The stairs always have layers and levels, to which you go up or down them. The reader would travel to the next page where they would find a stairway, however from a different perspective. Which the story describes the man moving away further away from the real world and closer to death.

 

Exploring Lettering Forms Found on Campus

For Eric’s Project, I captured the different forms of lettering found on the Whiteknights Campus. I aimed to photograph a variety of sign types, ranging from older and more worn signage to new and more pristine examples. On top of this, I wanted to capture different textures and surfaces of and around the signs. I used photographic techniques such as vantage point and depth of field and exploited the light and shadows to create intriguing images. Finally, I presented my selected outcomes on PowerPoint and categorised them into small groups. For example, metal surfaces and peeling vinyl stickers.

MY POWERPOINT:

Lettering in the Environment – TY1DP1 (PDF)