Tryptich

Brief

This is a brief set by one of the students in the college, the brief is vey open it allows participants to explore graphic design and create something of their own will. The aims I set out were to explore graphic design whilst considering the target audience of other designers at the college and the context of an A1 frame.

Rational

Making a brush typeface was something I wanted to do as it shows skills and specific knowledge into what makes up 90% of graphic design. This process, that has never been explored personally, allows for experimentation and exploration into graphic design which is something that the brief demands it also expresses personal interest.

Research

Research was done on design that was personally engaging and interesting, specific research into brush typefaces was done to understand the process behind its creation.

Here is a typeface that has been made out of acrylic paint scanned in and then finishing touches added to on photoshop. I took note of this creative process and let it influence the direction of this project.

Music was also an interest so the combination of design and music was very appealing to the project, above and below are two lyric posters that display typography as an art form rather than something functionally readable. Since the subject of various songs is hard to determine the poetry is often left to interpretation. These posters take that interpretation one step further by making the lyrics an art form and allowing viewers to appreciate the choice of words and the typography rather than the arrangment and readability. 

Development

development consisted off creating a drawing including lyrics of one of my favourite poems. The actually readability of this poem was not something I was too concerned with as the end result is more of a display of my typeface with links to the style of lyric posters researched.

Digitising this drawing gave the project another typographic option that reflected the bubble like typography from the posters researched.

Making the typeface consisted of looking at letters on a screen and trying to replicate their shapes using black acrylic paint on a watercolour paper. 

These letters were then scanned in and given a drop shadow as a simple aesthetic choice.

Once the letters were scanned another exploration into graphic design was implemented. Typesetting all the letters around a daffodil (the song is about daffodils) explored a tradition that is no longer really practiced. Even though the typesetting was done on screen by dragging and dropping each individual letter the act of using space by eye seemed to produce results that were more aesthetically pleasing than expected.

The finished poster meets what the brief demanded. Which was an exploration into graphic design. The typeface is typeset by eye on top of a grass texture and around a daffodil to reflect the song title "daffodils". The colours are all picked out of the secondary image of a daffodil. 

I also made a simpler poster to display just the typography and my exploration into graphic design.

Evaluation

This brief allowed for an exploration into graphic design, Typography was researched and personal interests into specific styles and uses of type were also looked at. This formed the basis of a project that aimed to display a hand rendered typeface that included the lyrics of a song. The rational behind using a daffodil and a grass texture came from the title of the song "daffodils" and the colours were informed by the secondary imagery of a daffodil.