Alphabet Soup (1)

I decided that it would be a good idea to watch 'Helvetica' - the documentary by Hustwit so that I felt I knew about Helvetica, its origin and how it became what it is today. I really enjoyed the film, I was surprised by how much it kept me engaged as my preconception would be that my attention span wouldn't last the whole 80 minutes.

I felt much more inspired after watching the movie and constantly took notes on what I thought were key comments or facts throughout the film. Something that I picked up on that I found particularly surprising was the amount of contrasting feelings about this typeface, some designers that thought the world of Helvetica and then there were those who despised it. From the opinion that it can influence the audience with its rhythm and simplicity it is deeply contrasted to being described as predictable, dull and overused. I feel like understand both sides to the argument but I don't feel like I have had enough experience to judge yet. There were a lot of inspirational quotes from many of the designers throughout this film, all which I felt applied to me and my work, 'just because something is legible, doesn't mean it communicates.' I love this phrase by David Carson and it will be one that I remember and take into consideration when creating work.

How did W.W.II have an impact on graphic design?

100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design

 'It felt like the dawn of a new age.' I think it is safe to say that the ending of the war brought to us the beginning of a new graphic design era, one that was so different no one expected it, but just embraced it, sans serif fonts became very popular and using the grid system became the norm.

100 Ideas That Changed Graphic Design

From the research that I have done I feel like graphic design became more widely recognised and came into its own within this era, it began to reach out to more people than ever in more ways of communicating than before the war. Even the younger generation as I found out were engaged via interactive magazines that reached out to them, this gives a communal feel and makes me feel as though the spirit of coming together as a country was enforced much more at this stage. Now that I have informed myself a lot more about Helvetica and the history of it and its era I feel that I am well prepared to begin this project with valuable information and necessary facts.

I went to vernon street and loaned Geometry of  Type out of the library after the session just so I could go over what I had learnt and revise the definitions. I found the book really useful, it was very clear with minimal text which made it easy to read.

Alvin Mendosa

The fragmentation of this type has the connotations of something broken that once was whole, this is what I aim to reproduce in my body of work for this piece. I want to create something that looks out of place or uncomfortable.

Neville Brody

Friday 11th October - Interim Crit

The crit for me was really helpful, I felt as though I'd hit a bit of a standstill with ideas but immediately the group gave me new and interesting ways to take my letterforms forward.
- use pins and cotton
- Red and blue, create the 3D effect
- Look at lace making
- Photocopy, test out 3D
- Look at other dimensions
- Anamorphic type

I really like the idea of using pins and threads to represent the dynamic lines that I have been using, this inspired me to play around with some more ideas. Anamorphic type is something I may experiment with too, time depending this could be something that takes my work from 2D to 3D and bring it away from just pen and paper.

This is a piece called 'Boundless' by Lauren Goldblum, I like how it seems completely continuous and there is no break in the entire sentence of the string yet trails off at the edges in several places. I am quite an organised person I don't particularly like how the letters are different sized from a visual perspective but as this as a whole is to represent construction I believe there is a good reason behind this. Goldblum also experiments with light when photographing to create shadow, I feel this is something I could also apply to my work.  

The deception of this design is what I particularly like, the design looks like it is made of a 2D print and a 3D object but it is the clever positioning and angle calculation within the design that makes it seem this way. The illusion it creates is that of a combination between dimensions, if I could create something like this as a typeface, perhaps looking into object and shadow this could look effective.

How does 3D work? I decided that the most common dimension 3D was something I should look into, a read up on how it works and how our eyes perceive things differently and how this relates to our eyes being two inches apart. 

Lo Siento Design

Barcelona-based graphic design studio LoSiento has been exploring 'four dimensional' lettering for at least a year now, honing their craft alongside client projects. As in the iconic cover of Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, the 3D object is an ambigram—i.e. it reads from multiple perspectives.

With the word I have been given being dimension I felt it would be appropriate to look into how other designers have taken dimensions further than 2D or 3D. One thing that fascinated me about these 4D creations was the precision, I can imagine it must have taken a lot of time to work out how to physically create something that was visible from different angles. I think the contrast of the hectic physical dimension is contrasted well with the white stock, it needed to be simple as not to over complicate these pieces, it draws attention to the function rather than the form.