Typography Project 1: Environmental Lettering

Power

I chose this word in class because it caught my interest, and I thought I could give it a very interesting meaning or connotation when manipulating the environment. As soon as I picked up the word, I knew what I was going to do with it, but I tried some other ideas first, just to make sure.

When I first cut out the letters, I thought of different meanings for power, such as strength, authority, electricity, or influence of a message. I first tried authority, putting the letters on official looking documents on a business-like desk, but it didn’t seem effective. Then I tried electricity, putting the letters on my computer. With the letters reflecting in the black screen, it looked very neat, and seemed to convey the idea of electricity as power, but I still wasn’t convinced.

Then I tried my original idea of music being the most POWERful force in my life. So I combined it with the idea of electricity, and the idea of influence through the message in a song. Obviously I can’t use actual music through a photograph, so I added in the guitar to hint at songwriting or the performance of a song. While I could have put the word on the actual guitar, it did not seem “POWERful” enough. So I leaned the guitar against the amp, but wanted the amp to be the more dominant element of the two. The positive forms of the letters seemed static and forced. So I tried the negative, and it became more bold and aggressive (powerful). The background needed to be submissive so it wouldn’t distract from the word, but not too plain as to seem empty, hence the closet door.

Unofficial Language

Unofficial Language Project

Illustrator output:

Mock Installation:

Photoshop Mockups:

Book Covers

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy

Montage/Text mashup

New text composition

When I was working with this montage, I was looking at the very odd couple of the Voodoo doll and the raisin lady, and I was reminded of a quote my brother said, “We put the ‘FUN’ in dysFUNctional family.” I first decided to heighten the effect of the pun by pointing out the word ‘fun’. I put the first instance in quotation marks to make it stand out, and in the word dysfunctional, I capitalized the word, to make it more visible.

Focusing on the word dysfunctional, I decided to make all of the text slightly warped in different ways. I made the first line of text in just a plain ole wave. Then I converted the word dysfunctional into a mesh. In doing this, I could make it the MOST dysfunctional word. Being that it was the one that was carrying most of the weight of the sentence, I figured it would be best to stretch it and bend it and warp it the most, but i still wanted it to be legible, and still wanted it to be similar to the other words. the word family was another instance of the same idea.

I decided at last that the first line was just not wierd enough, so I doubled it and turned one of them, to give it the carbon-copy peel-off appearance.

Montage

This particular document consists of 5 images: The Voodoo doll (which a friend drew for a band’s logo), the Sun-Maid rasin lady, the Reindeer (which came from a Chili’s coaster around Christmas time), the crown (which came from a logo of a hat company), and the Background decoration which came from a Sailor Jerry’s sticker. I knew immediately that I wanted the Sailor Jerry’s sticker to be a pattern in some kind of background. I also knew that i wanted the Crown to go on the Voodoo doll. Dressed in his suit, he looked very important and dominating, and giving him the crown just doubled that effect. It was kind of like crowning him King of the Composition. Looking at this, it is obvious that he is the most important item. The reindeer didn’t really need any decoration or anything; it was pretty much resolved in it’s self; I just knew that I wanted several of them on the page to imply a herd of some sort. However, when I started messing with blending modes, I realized that it would look great to have one reindeer dominating over the others. The raisin lady just seemed to fit with the voodoo doll. the angle of her torso and his arm just seemed made for each other. I gave the raisin lady a small drop shadow because it just helped imply that she was in front of the voodoo doll  instead of running into his side on the same plane (with his arm around her rather than through her.) The Reindeer towards the bottom-left were originally too bright and took too much attention from the handsome couple. Again, when I started messing with blending modes, I found that I could actually imply the reindeers’ existence without them actually fully being there. There is no actual form of the reindeer, but there is a reindeer shaped selection where the Sailor Jerry background is red, so it appears as thought the reindeer is red, but the black space in between the Sailor Jerry shapes remains unchanged.

I originally wanted a starry night sky on the background, but all of the stars I came up with were too present and were overpowering the couple. Since the compositions background is black, and the sailor jerry shapes are slightly lighter, that same starry night effect is still implied in a way, even if it doesn’t really look like a starry night by it’s self.

Line Art text/image mashup

Line Art text composition

The quote here, “And your world can have as many happy little trees and happy little clouds in it as you want!” is one that I grabbed from a friends Facebook page. I chose this text because when it is  paired with the needles in the line art images, it can imply hallucinations due to drug use, thus reemphasizing the idea of the needles being drug related. I chose to change the size of certain words to give them more emphasis in the composition. They’re not necessarily the strongest words in the composition, but they are definitely words that define the meaning and tone of the sentence, such as “‘Your’ world”, “Trees” and “Clouds”, and “many”. I also changed the shape of certain words to give them a certain look, such as stretching the word “Clouds” so that it looks similar to a cloud, and warping the word “Happy” so that it looks whimsical. I also used the phrase “happy little trees and happy little clouds” several times all over the composition, being that it is basically the main theme of the text. It fills in the visual space between the more important words.

Line Art image pair

The combination of these two images creates a sense of contrast  in meaning. The teddy bear is usually associated with children and happiness and cute, cuddly things. The line quality of the teddy bear is also very clean, giving it a sense of solidity and security. The needles could represent either hospitals and vaccines, or illegal drugs and addiction. The way the needles are piled up and the fact that the line work in each of the needles is rather sketchy and rough, gives them the appearance of needles that would be used more for heroin or something. The contrast in line quality emphasizes the difference between the two images. The juxtaposition of an image like a teddy bear that would normally be associated with children and innocence, with the image of a bunch of  used heroin needles associated with addiction and disease almost portrays a sense of moral corruption. Also the way that the teddy bear is peeking in from the corner makes the bear seem slightly mischievous. The fact that the needles are obviously the biggest thing on the page makes them kind of intimidating in comparison to the bear.