Typography - Final Project
30/10/19 - 13/11/19 (Week 10 - Week 12)
Ahmed Yaman Ibrahim (0341119)
Typography
Final Project
LECTURE NOTES
Troublemakers' Manifesto protest placard
30/10/19 (Week 10)
The duration of this class went to designing a protest placard for the upcoming Troublemakers' Manifesto: A Design Colloquium event. The placard is meant to display our own manifesto for design; our individual belief about "design" and "society" and its purpose. The manifesto will later be used as our message for our final project assignment as well.
Our placard was to be designed on a cardboard or corrugated board of roughly A2 size. We were asked to use black ink to write our manifesto and to hold up the board using a recycled broom stick or similar material. Our manifesto was also to be approved by Mr Vinod and Mr Shamsul before proceeding with the design. For my manifesto, I had three options in mind:
1. "A WORLD WITHOUT DESIGN IS A WORLD WITHOUT PURPOSE"
2. "DESIGN WITH INTENT, NOT JUST CONTENT"
3. "DESIGN MUST INFLUENCE TO PREVENT IGNORANCE"
After consulting with Mr Vinod, he advised that I go with the second option.
For my board, I stacked two sheets of A2-size corrugated board and stuck them together as I felt one sheet was too thin. For my design, I wrapped the board in white paper as well. I outlined my manifesto on the board in pencil aside from the words I wanted to highlight (INTENT and CONTENT) and filled them in with black ink. I then used red paint to write the two highlight words in freehand. The board turned out like this:
Troublemakers' Manifesto: A Design Colloquium
Our placard was to be designed on a cardboard or corrugated board of roughly A2 size. We were asked to use black ink to write our manifesto and to hold up the board using a recycled broom stick or similar material. Our manifesto was also to be approved by Mr Vinod and Mr Shamsul before proceeding with the design. For my manifesto, I had three options in mind:
1. "A WORLD WITHOUT DESIGN IS A WORLD WITHOUT PURPOSE"
2. "DESIGN WITH INTENT, NOT JUST CONTENT"
3. "DESIGN MUST INFLUENCE TO PREVENT IGNORANCE"
After consulting with Mr Vinod, he advised that I go with the second option.
For my board, I stacked two sheets of A2-size corrugated board and stuck them together as I felt one sheet was too thin. For my design, I wrapped the board in white paper as well. I outlined my manifesto on the board in pencil aside from the words I wanted to highlight (INTENT and CONTENT) and filled them in with black ink. I then used red paint to write the two highlight words in freehand. The board turned out like this:
 |
| Fig. 1.1: Final Project - Troublemakers' Manifesto protest placard |
 |
| Fig. 1.2: Final Project - Troublemakers' Manifesto placard, featuring me! |
Troublemakers' Manifesto: A Design Colloquium
08/11/19 (Week 11)
The Troublemakers' Manifesto event was held during week 11. The event was held alongside an exhibition of student work, known as the Design for Good exhibition. The design colloquium event was a talk that consisted of a diverse range of speakers presenting their views on how to be disruptive in society, particularly in the field of design, in order to identify and solve problems for the greater good. The event hosted five speakers:
Ms Lew Pik-Svonn is a social activist who spoke of community arts and activism; she spoke of her Chow Kit mapping project, challenging the toxic racist narrative with regards to religion, teaching students at the Thai border to develop community projects, working with refugee communities in Malaysia, the Occupy Dataran movement as well as the Pasar Percuma free market.
Ms Ezrena Marwan is the founder of the Malaysia Design archive, and she spoke of Malaysia's history and its intersection with design and culture. She spoke of her archiving process of Malaysia's graphic design history and a general breakdown of the developmental timeline of the country's design roots.
Ms Lew Pik-Svonn is a social activist who spoke of community arts and activism; she spoke of her Chow Kit mapping project, challenging the toxic racist narrative with regards to religion, teaching students at the Thai border to develop community projects, working with refugee communities in Malaysia, the Occupy Dataran movement as well as the Pasar Percuma free market.
Ms Ezrena Marwan is the founder of the Malaysia Design archive, and she spoke of Malaysia's history and its intersection with design and culture. She spoke of her archiving process of Malaysia's graphic design history and a general breakdown of the developmental timeline of the country's design roots.
Mr Muthu Nedumaran is a font engineer, typeface designer and software developer. He spoke of how he developed the Tamil typefaces for print, web and mobile; and how his typefaces are now bundled in iOS and some Android devices.
Ms Suzy Sulaiman is a creative practitioner who spoke of learning to listen to yourself and the community, and learning how to bridge gaps to build a compassionate and caring society.
Yang Berhormat Fahmi Fadzil is a Malaysian politician with a history of art, acting and theater. He spoke of how to be disruptive in society by coming up with solutions for community problems, and how this ties into his legislative policies.
The design colloquium was an incredibly insightful experience and I'd love to see similar events in the future.
 |
| Fig. 1.3: Troublemakers' Manifesto speakers |
INSTRUCTIONS
FINAL PROJECT
For our final project, we were to recreate our manifesto digitally on A3 using the previously given 9 type families. We were to use as little graphical elements as possible and mainly use the written content itself as part of the design, and are able to use one other color besides black and white.
My main struggle with this project was trying to graphically represent my message using text alone. I came up with a few initial designs:
 |
| Fig. 2.1: Final Project - Initial designs |
Upon consulting with Mr Vinod, he advised that I stick with the middle design on a white background, without using borders. He also suggested that I work on a few more options. I decided to come up with a few more designs, but still had trouble with expressing my message graphically using just words.
 |
| Fig. 2.2: Final Project - Second set of designs |
 |
| Fig. 2.3: Final Project - Third set of designs |
I discussed with Mr Vinod about how to apply the brush stroke here in a way that better emphasizes "INTENT" as opposed to how it is being used in these designs, as it appears to highlight "CONTENT" instead. He also advised that I use as much of the space available on the board. I decided to refine the suggested layout with a few more options.
Out of these options, Mr Vinod and Mr Shamsul approved the design on the far right, as they said it was able to emphasize the word "INTENT" while also differentiating "CONTENT" from the rest of the text. I went ahead with animating this design.
I decided to animate it with After Effects; I imported the layers into AE and animated the words to come in from both sides of the board, similar to my first Typography exercise. I then added the brush stroke behind the word "INTENT" and added a scaling effect for a bit more emphasis. The animation was approved by Mr Vinod.
I later printed the poster on A3 and framed it as instructed by the lecturers.
 |
| Fig. 2.4: Final Project - Fourth set of designs |
Out of these options, Mr Vinod and Mr Shamsul approved the design on the far right, as they said it was able to emphasize the word "INTENT" while also differentiating "CONTENT" from the rest of the text. I went ahead with animating this design.
I decided to animate it with After Effects; I imported the layers into AE and animated the words to come in from both sides of the board, similar to my first Typography exercise. I then added the brush stroke behind the word "INTENT" and added a scaling effect for a bit more emphasis. The animation was approved by Mr Vinod.
I later printed the poster on A3 and framed it as instructed by the lecturers.
 |
| Fig. 2.5: Final Project - Approved design |
 |
| Fig. 2.6: Final Project - Framed poster |
 |
| Fig. 2.7: Final Project - Working on the animation in After Effects |
 |
| Fig. 2.8: Final Project - Converting animation to GIF in Photoshop |
Fig. 2.9: Final Project - Final design
 |
| Fig. 2.10: Final Project - Animation (GIF) |
FEEDBACK
Week 11
After helping me make a few adjustments, Mr Vinod and Mr Shamsul advised that I stick to a white background and avoid using borders, and to explore a few more options.
Week 12
For the second set of options, Mr Vinod suggested that I refine the design some more, as well as experiment a bit with how the word "INTENT" is emphasized. For the third set of options, Mr Vinod and I discussed how to apply the brush stroke in a way that better emphasizes "INTENT" as opposed to how it is being used in the current designs, as it appears to highlight "CONTENT" instead. He also advised that I use as much of the space available on the board. Mr Vinod and Mr Shamsul then approved one option from the last set of designs that I made, for me to move forward with animation. This was also approved by them upon consultation.
REFLECTIONS
Experience:
When working on our final poster, 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.
Observation:
I noticed that a lot of students were facing the same issue I was as mentioned before, and 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.
Findings:
I found that exploring design options was a bit more difficult due to the restrictions we had, but it also helped me try and be more creative with how I expressed the text visually. Overall with this being the final project for the semester, I feel I've learned quite a lot with regards to the subject, and the extensive research I've done over the course of the subject has definitely helped improve my design work.
FURTHER READING
Exploring Typography - Tova Rabinowitz Deer
Week 11-12
 |
| Fig. 3.1: Exploring Typography by Tova Rabinowitz Deer |
This book was quite useful as it provided a lot of examples that explain how typography is used in various cases. It also showcased the work of some type designers and the hows and whys of their design process, as well as some of their personal opinions on type design.
