20/11/19 - 27/11/19 (Week 13 - Week 14)
Ahmed Yaman Ibrahim (0341119)
Typography
Final Compilation & Reflections
INSTRUCTIONS
SUBMISSIONS
Exercise 1: Lettering
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| Fig. 1.1: Exercise 1 - Lettering ("Expressive") - Static |
Fig. 1.2: Exercise 1 - Lettering ("Expressive") - PDF
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| Fig. 1.3: Exercise 1 - Lettering ("Expressive") - Animated GIF |
Exercise 2: Type Expression
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| Fig. 2.1: Exercise 2 - Type Expression - Static |
Fig. 2.2: Exercise 2 - Type Expression - PDF
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Fig. 2.3: Exercise 2 - Type Expression - Animated GIF
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Project 1: Text Formatting & Expression
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| Fig. 3.1: Project 1 - Text Formatting & Expression - Static |
Fig. 3.2: Project 1 - Text Formatting & Expression - PDF
Project 2: Font Design
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| Fig. 4.1: Project 2 - Font Design - Sketches |
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| Fig. 4.2: Project 2 - Font Design - Digitized letters |
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| Fig. 4.3: Project 2 - Font Design - Poster (Static) |
Fig. 4.4: Project 2 - Font Design - Poster (PDF)
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| Fig. 4.5: Project 2 - Font Design - Font information |
Final Project
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| Fig. 5.1: Final Project - Troublemakers' Manifesto placard |
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| Fig. 5.2: Final Project - Poster (Static) |
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| Fig. 5.3: Final Project - Framed poster |
Fig. 5.4: Final Project - Poster (PDF)
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| Fig. 5.5: Final Project - Animated GIF |
REFLECTIONS
Experience:
For my first exercise, I struggled with coming up with a design that could represent my personality well. The reason I decided to go with "expressive" was because it was both something I felt I could refer to myself as, while also being able to communicate that theme properly when I sketch it out as my name. I felt the second exercise was a lot more interesting as we had a variety of words to experiment with. As with the first exercise, I had a bit of trouble with conveying the meaning of the word through the type. For Project 1, I came up with a lot of variations with slight alterations to each design as I felt there was always something I could do better, especially with the headline text. During Project 2, I had bit of trouble catching up in as I missed two of my classes due to illness, so I had quite a lot of work piled up that I needed to finish. I spent a lot of time digitizing the fonts on Illustrator as I kept noticing more and more adjustments I could make, the more time I spent working on it. When working on the poster for our final project, I had trouble trying to express the words in the manifesto visually without using graphical elements. Mr Vinod and Mr Shamsul's extensive feedback helped a lot here; however I felt that we were a bit more restricted with what we could do for the final in comparison to our work for the previous projects, mainly because the work was based off of the placards we designed for the Troublemakers' Manifesto event. My overall experience with the module has been incredibly fruitful; I've learned a great deal in these 14 weeks and quite a lot of it can be applied to other modules and work I may be doing in the future. More than anything, I've learned to appreciate the value of detail and the importance of creating something that is effective and meaningful, rather than just visually appealing.
Observation:
I noticed during the initial weeks of the semester that a lot of students were overwhelmed by the amount of information we had to take in during class, but as the weeks progressed I could tell that they (including myself) were able to keep up with what was going on in class. Over the course of Project 1 and 2, I learned that patience is key when designing type, as it requires a lot of observation and focus, and you always feel like there's something more you can do to improve the design. When working on our final project, I noticed that a lot of students had trouble deciding whether to express the manifesto using text only or using the limited colors. I saw that some students tried to add in an extra color to try and alleviate the issue, but I decided not to do the same as I wanted to keep things simple. Looking back on this module, I can tell that most of the students, including myself, have had somewhat of a change in perspective when it comes to how we do design work; I think this has to do with learning how to effectively communicate a message visually through text and imagery (mainly text in the case of Typography). I've also noticed that I'm more aware of the typography that I come across in daily life, and I feel that looking into this more will help me improve my own work as a designer.
Findings:
Over the course of the semester, I discovered that sketching out multiple ideas was key to coming up with better designs; the more I options I sketched out and digitized, the better the feedback I received. As mentioned before, my biggest takeaway from the time I spent designing a font for Project 2 is that details are everything. There is no end to the adjustments you can make to refine your designs, and the end result of the work spent on creating something for yourself is quite worthwhile. For the final project however, I still felt that there was more we could have done for it; we put in a reasonable amount of time for it as with the previous projects but it felt a bit rushed as we were close to the end of the semester, and because of that, I felt that in a way, I was not able to make the most of the project, compared to my work for Project 1 and 2. That being said, I feel I've learned quite a lot with regards to the subject, and the research I've done over the course of the 14 weeks has definitely helped improve my design work.
