Category: TY1DP1

Work by Part 1 students as part of their ‘Design Practice’ module.

Recreating Type

  

For Gerry’s project, our first task was to create the word ‘cadbury’ in the same font as the word hesion above it. I found this particularly challenging. Mimicking a typeface with only the option to view a very selective range of its characters is something I have never done before but I gave it my best shot. Gerry pointed out my U in cadbury should look more like an upside down n with a stem.

For the second task we were given some letters that looked as if each character had been cut in half, It was our job to fill in the rest of the figures. It was interesting to see the different interpretations of the first letter, only the top half of the character stroke was revealed so I incorrectly thought it was a C, others thought it was an S, when it was in fact an A. I added some serifs to my letters just to make them more interesting.

 

DC

For Kim’s Project we were tasked with creating a logo like symbol that merged our first initial and last initial. I experimented around a lot to create many number of variations however in the end I decided to go with the lower case d inside the upper case C. I then played with the style of the glyph giving it serifs and adding an italic angle to it. I really liked the final outcome even if it does resemble the @ symbol.

Lettering Around Campus

For Erics’s project we studied lettering in the environment. I tried to find lettering around the campus that i thought looked interesting. I liked a lot of the stencil lettering which there was a surprising amount of. After we had taken photographs we were asked to organise/arrange them in a way we thought was suitable. I decided to arrange mine by colour with the greens at the top, followed by the blues, yellows, reds and neutral tones. When looking at how my class mates had arranged theirs I realised mine was by far the least creative however Eric asked an interesting question about whether the colour groups I had split my photographs into had anything else in common. While the green lettering generally invoked safety or a message about the environment it was difficult to find correlations between the other colour groups.

The Matrix

For this project we were asked to create a film, book or even a meme in the form of a classic penguin book cover. For mine I decided to create a penguin book cover for the matrix. I started by getting the green color pallet a lot of people associate with the film. I then distorted the type to make it look like it was dodging the bullets, (a reference to the film) however I’d say this was semi successful as Its quite difficult to tell what my intentions were. Overall though I like the green and really enjoyed this project.

matrix vs 02

Paint by numbers

For Kim’s project, we were partnered up with someone from our class and we had to tell each other three interesting facts about ourselves. From that, we then had to come up with an ideal gift for our partner. My partner’s facts about herself were that she plays the piano and loves photography and painting. We then had to pick 3 numbers from 1-210 and these matched up with random words on a list that Kim gave us. My 3 words were, necklace, cup and feather. We had to use these words to help us come up with more ideas for our ideal gift, here were some of my initial ideas.

I ended up going with one of the original ideas that I came up for my final design which you can see at the top of the page. This was a paint by numbers grand piano with cameras fitted on the inside of the piano facing outwards to capture the reactions of her audience. On reflection I think I could have also developed one of my other ideas which was a desk with a small keyboard built into the front of it, a paintbrush put fitted in the desk, a mini easel fitted on top and a lockable camera storage box also fitted on the inside (sketch in the bottom left corner)

Typeface Design

For Gerry’s project, we had two tasks.  Firstly, using the provided letters ‘h e s i o n’ , to give us clues on the characteristics of the typeface, we had to draw the letters ‘c a d b u r y’. We had to pay attention to the contrasts of stroke sizes as well as the x height and many other aspects of the typeface. Overall, I was pleased with my outcome for this task, all though, there are definitely a few letters, such as the ‘a‘ and ‘b’ that needed alterations.

 

For the second task, we had to draw the missing parts of the letter forms. My outcome for this task can be seen below.

I found this typeface design project interesting as I was able to look at letter forms in more detail. I inspected the dimensions and angles of each character and discovered the relationships between different letters.

What letter is it?

This session has allowed me to concentrate on finer details like using precision whilst sketching the letters. In the first task, we were given a typeface which we then had to replicate using a different word with different letters. The typeface was not specified so the challenge was to think about what the letter could look like with some help from the letters already given. The letters in the alphabet follow into specific groups. For example, characters with descenders fall into a group of their own; characters with ascenders fall into another. I drew in the x-height line as I knew it would help me know how tall/short the letter should be. In the second task, our objective was to use clues from the visible parts of the letters and then try to imagine what the rest of the letters may look like. We then had to draw this. From the feedback I got from the previous task, I concentrated on how much weight I put on the different parts of the characters.

PULP FICTION

Penguin Book cover2.2

Penguin Book cover3.3

In todays session I learnt how to recreate the format of the iconic Penguin Classic book series. I recreated The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I learnt how to manipulate the type of the cover as one element, experimenting with leading, type size, font and paragraph rules to replicate the aesthetic of the original copy. along the way I picked up on how to create Pantone swatches from classic covers and use them within shapes for the design.

This came into effect when I had to adapt my remakes format into a new cover. I chose Pulp Fiction as Tarantino is one of my favourite directors. The format allowed me to change the name and subtitles whilst maintaining the same proportions. I decided to use a slightly dull yellow to represent the colour scheme in the movie title. I also imported elements such as the 10c sign and the silhouette of Mia and Vince dancing from one of the iconic scenes, which can be linked to the quotes I used from Vince in the last line of the sub-title. As a call back to the scene where Vince accidentally shoots Marvin, I decided to incorporate blood in the foreground and background by sandwiching them in-between the colour block layers. I adjusted the opacity in the foreground to show the characters trying to cover it up with Jimmie’s bed sheets.

The links above are of my original copy and my Pulp Fiction adaptation

Stranger Things.

TYINT Penguin Book Design

In class, we learnt how to design a classic penguin cover on InDesign and know the basic format of it. We were also showed the important tools that are used on a regular basis when using and how to use it.

I am not particularly fond of InDesign for cover design cause I find the program confusing to understand and tricky to use and I prefer photoshop but with the seminar, I was able to use and understand much more tools than before

There were many tryout and errors when designing the cover since the task for the day was to replicate it as much as possible. The hardest was designing the penguin logo cause it involved so many steps to get to the final product thou I believe my logo isn’t accurate with more practice I can do better.

Messed Up Version.

For my second tasked I did a book cover for one of my favourite series using a classic penguin book cover as inspiration. The series is called ‘Stranger Things’, It is a Fantasy, Horror TV Series on Netflix.

Stranger thing has an iconic bold logo that is recognizable anywhere. The font is ITC Benguiat, it’s a serif typeface with all letters stretched vertically. The colour theme for the cover is Red, white, and black because the logo for the series is a red or red outline with either a white or black background.

I turn the penguin upside down to represent a dimension in the series called ‘the upside-down’. The scratch marks represent the demon of the book and the marks that show that this film is horror.

The series Stranger Thing is a series I love because it has a 1983 theme, and I enjoyed the vintage layout in which the film is produced. It is influenced by Stephan king horror books so I wanted the theme of my cover to be dark.

I like the simplicity of the book and I feel like it communicates to viewers what can of the series cover is based on at the same time without giving to much information.

The Curious Incident of the dog in the nighttime.

‘The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime’, is a book about a 15 year old boy who discovers the body of his neighbor’s dog. The book is written, almost as a diary, about his experiences when trying to uncover the mystery. Although it is wasn’t explicitly stated, it is believed that this boy has autism which is a crucial fact in his adventures.

The main cover of the book is blue with white star shapes. It has a cartoon image of a dog in the middle. The font used is an imitated version of  a handwriting but in a 3D version, so I tried to find a type that looks handwritten but didn’t make it 3D to stick to the original Penguin cover. I made the symbol, that encapsulates the writing ‘penguin books’, purple.  I tried to stick to the main layout of the penguin cover whilst making sure that i add the appropriate features for ‘The Curious Incident of the dog in the nighttime’.