When we were first set the task to photograph lettering in the environment I didn’t think it would be too much of a challenge. It wasn’t until I was around 30 photos into my shoot that I realised a lot of the lettering I had captured were all very similar. This made me have to think a little bit deeper into the task and how I was approaching it. A lot of what I had photographed in the beginning was part of the universities branding and signage so of course there was going to be a lot of repetition as many companies, including the university, stick to the same fonts across all there branding to keep it all connected and flowing well. Therefore, I had to start looking for the signs that weren’t so obvious. In the end, some of my favourite images of lettering that I captured I had found were stuck to the back of signs, welded on to lap posts and hidden in the far corners of the university campus.

The second part of our task was to organise our images into groups. I chose to split my photos into what their purpose was and the three groups I ended up with were; information, warn and advertise. Once I had organised my photos and presented them on PowerPoint (seen below), I soon realised that I had unintentionally also organised two of the categories into categories of colour. If I were to attempt this task again I would edit all my photos to be in black and white to take away the influence of the colours used and focus solely on the lettering alone.

 

In this modern world, do we really see the writing on the wall?

We go about our daily lives and don’t even realise how much writing we come across in the short walk to work. That road sign we’ve driven past 50 times last week and no longer pay attention… The graffiti by our shed, do you still see it?

Unless it’s shiny and new it holds no interest to us, the first time we drive to the new house we’re all bright eyed; that’s a pretty rose bush and that mural looks amazing… Yet we won’t be paying it any attention after we pass it a couple of times. We no longer care, no longer find it interesting and important.

And yet, there’s entire manufacturing process dedicated to each type of writing we no longer take in. We see it and yet we don’t. Those footprints on the ground? The first time you saw them you probably tried to stand on them and be exactly 2 metres from the person in front, right? Now though, a mere couple of month later? You just look for the colour to know where to line up.

The more I looked into the forgotten signs around campus the more intriguing they become once more, how many messages does colour alone convey? How many different ways do lamp posts around campus carry messages or information on them? Who made those signs and how? Why did they decide to put that metal writing on the side of a building and not use paint instead?

Throughout this project I realised how closed my eyes really were and how ignorant I was to the many ways letters are presented to me in my everyday life.