Assignment 3: Typographic Hierarchy Part 2

Final design:

Poster

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Exercise 8 — Size change and typographic weight

Exercise 9 — Graphic elements: rules, bullets, geometric shapes

Assignment 3: Typographic Hierarchy

Exercise 1 — linespacing

Exercise 2 — typographic weights

Exercise 3 — horizontal shift: two flush-left margins

Exercise 4 — horizontal shift: three flush-left margins

Exercise 5 — linespacing and typographic weight

Exercise 6 — typographic weights and horizontal shift

Exercise 7 — horizontal shift and linespacing

Thinking With Type: Letter

This section in Ellen Lutpon’s “Thinking With Type” provided me with an interesting look into how type and various typefaces have changed from the early use of moveable type to the current advances in digital type. After reading through how type has changed due to changing times and their technologies, I would have to say that the “monster fonts”–or “big, bold faces…designed by distoring the anatomical elements of classical letters” (pg. 21)–were my favorites. These bold fonts are similar to the ones that we often see in advertising and media, which is where my interests lie. For this reason, I think that I am particularly drawn to these styles of type. Looking at the large gothic types especially, the letterforms catch my eye and create an aesthetically pleasing reading experience for me.

If I had to choose any type of lettering that was my absolute favorite in this section, however, it would be the hand lettering on pages 50 and 51. This hand lettering is very close to graphic design and art, and its organic, different shaped letters make it seem very personal and special. Because we probably won’t be dealing with hand lettering in this course, however, I would still choose monster fonts as my favorite because they have this same big and bold feel to them.

Assignment Two: Looking at Letterforms

For Assignment Two, my favorite part of the process was creating thumbnail sketches and exploring the relationships between my initials (IJT) with different typefaces. Being able to physically draw these designs with a pen and paper was the best way for me to explore the different ways these letters could interact.

THUMBNAIL SKETCH PROCESS

Image of my 48 thumbnail sketches:

Initial sketching/exploring the form.

48 thumbnail sketches. First two rows: Rockwell, second two: Gill Sans, last two rows: Bodoni.

ILLUSTRATOR DESIGN PROCESS

Once I began to input these ideas into Adobe Illustrator, however, I began to encounter some differences between how I had been drawing the letterforms and how they actually looked on the screen. Therefore, I had to make several adjustments in order to make the images as similar to the original sketches as possible.

Some iterations that were created in Illustrator from the thumbnail sketches.

Final design. I liked the typeface Rockwell because its playful shape worked well with letters in my initials. With the large dots in the i and the j, this playful aspect was emphasized. For this same reason, I chose to use lower case letters to create a more fun and youthful take on the traditional monogram.

 

Assignment 1

Images 1 and 2:

Process/thumbnail sketches for each word. Page one: congestion, order, comfort. Page two: playfulness, tension.

Image 3:

Exploration of a few concepts in Illustrator.

Image 4:

Final set of designs.