Typing...

Type and layout assignment 3 - hand drawn type

Hand drawn typography inspiration

I really love the look of hand drawn typography, and calligraphy.  I'm not so keen on the very perfect styles, which take years to master, but the more informal characterful type, as show below.

http://typophile.com/node/88004

https://dribbble.com/shots/1422318-Begemot-Calligraphy-Logo

I love the huge contrast between the thick and thin strokes in the two pieces above, and will try out various techniques to achieve something similar. I will use a ruling pen and a Pilot Parallel pen.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luca-beanone-barcellona/5859864506/in/set-72157627020568080/

To try out the technique above I need to use a straight edge calligraphy pen. I like the use of two colours and the informal style and combination of fonts.

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/18155204717369050/

I really like the splatters and uneven letter forms above, either created, I imagine, with a ruling pen or a handmade cola pen on rough watercolour paper.

http://www.seblester.com

The above piece is by Seb Lester from the cover of the latest Uppercase magazine.  It is created in the Copperplate style with an oblique pen holder and nib. I really like the rhythm and the smooth curling letter forms of this work. I intend to try this technique as well, although I suspect it will take a huge amount of practice.

These below are from Uppercase issue 23, by Pietro Piscitello.  I like the second down on the right - the contrast of thick/thin strokes make a really eye catching font with lots of character.

Type and layout assignment 4 - fools

Eric Gill quote poster

For my 4th poster I chose to use the quote by Eric Gill, "There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools". Gill Sans was his most famous typeface which he designed in 1926. It was used extensively by newly nationalised British Rail in the 1940s onwards. Now the government and the Church of England, amongst many other British institutions  use it as their corporate font.

My ideas are sketched below:

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I selected the poster below as my design inspiration, featuring another, later font by a different designer.

http://webexpedition18.com/articles/55-surprisingly-beautiful-typography-posters-and-desings/


I absolutely love everything about this album cover design and want to incorporate the feel and colour palette into my design:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/klausspecktur/461973984/

The poster below is a modern day example of, in my opinion, a simple idea brilliantly executed.




http://www.pinterest.com/pin/12314598957155787/

I am going to incorporate the common background colour from these pieces in my design.

Colour schemes from the 40s and 50s when Gill Sans was widely adopted:

Type and layout assignment 2 - grids

Poster 2 research - grids

I wanted to use imagery to convey the idea of a graphic design grid, but without being too literal.  I had the idea that I could use the words National Grid (a play on the electricity distribution system of the UK) over a map of the country. I wanted to include a reference to one of the forerunners of the graphic design grid, Wim Crouwel, so I chose to use his typeface, New Alphabet.

 

Some inspiration I chose to use was this image:

Another gridded image I like is below.  I would like to incorporate the feel of this piece in my design.

Something I found on Pinterest which is similar to what I want to do.

Wim Crouwel's new alphabet harks back to one of the founders of the modern grid and is the typeface that I want to use for my design.

I researched which colours to use to represent the 4 countries of the UK, and looked at their official flags. Scotland was dark blue, England red, and wales was red on green, so I chose green.  Northern Ireland doesn't have it's own flag, but flies the Union Jack, so I chose white to represent it.

Constructivism/Suprematism

Russian art movements in the early 20th century

In 1919 the popular avant-garde style of art was widely critisized by officials in Russia.  At the time Russia was emerging from its agricultural heritage to become an industrial nation. Artists such as Tatlin and Rodchenko were rejecting self-expression and their work changed to illustrate their commitment to industrial materials.  El Lissitzky moved towards Suprematism with his propaganda work in support of the Russian revolution.  Constructivists renounced fine art and worked for the communist movement.  As you can see from the last image, both Constructivism and Suprematism originate from Cubism and went on to evolve into Bauhaus and abstract art.

A Google search for Suprematism displays the following images:

I particularly like this image by Kazimir Malevich - the colours, the irregular but strong shapes, and the slightly dirty primary colours. The layout looks perfectly imbalanced.

White space

Press pack folder

We were asked to design a press pack folder with 90% white space for a painting and decorating firm, Paint Kingston.  I am relatively happy with my design, but if I had more time I would have liked to think of ways to improve it. I wanted to illustrate that the company is a commercial and domestic decorators, and mimic the idea of paint colour charts with the houses and tower block. I'm not sure the pale turquoise works as it looks a bit swimming pool like.

Idea generation for book cover series

Themes and style

After researching the genre of the books, book cover series that appealed to me, art of the period, and current interpretations of Constructivism, I created another mind map to think of ideas for the book covers themselves. I concluded that I wanted to use a style very loosely influenced by the Russian design of the early half of he 20th century, including:

Soviet style fonts, but with a distressed texture

Duotone with different colours for each book

Black and white images, either converted to outlines or silhouettes, or grayscale photo montage.

More research

Book covers

More books covers with inspiration for my work:

I really like the colours and dynamic layout of this version of Solzhenitsyn's book.

Constructivist inspired poster design making using of a strong diagonal design element which I want to incorporate:

A Penguin book cover design with lots of Russian design styling, below.  I like the typography and the yellowed background.

El Lissitzky's work characterised by very strong directional typography and red and black colour scheme which has influenced my designs.

Two pieces of work from current designers based on Constructivist principles, below.  I would like to use the diagonal element and colours, with a more distressed feel to it, but make use of the silhoutte element.

 


A Paul Rand piece with photomontage, below.  I will try to use this technique in my work.

Russian style typography which I would like to use is shown below.

http://www.paratype.com/pstore/fonts/Rodchenko.htm

Book cover series

Common themes

I looked at the covers of more book sets that I liked.  It was interesting to find that many sets only had one or two design features in common.  I like this set, but it is only the binding, sans serif font and size that are common, along with the flat bright colours, however they still have the feel of a set.

This set is also quite diverse, but with a common typeface throughout.

http://lilrobin.com/work/publishing/books/bn-book-cover-series/

Research for book cover series

Penguin book covers

Moving on from constructivist graphic design which makes use of photo montage, I am inspired by these classic 1960s Penguin book covers.  I would like to develop my ideas by using duotone for the design as these book covers have done, and create a retro feel by using a similar layout and photography, but with a Russian style typeface. The imagery of each cover is treated differently - photography, silhouette, flat images - I will experiment with these styles. The typeface on all these designs is sans serif, which is a design feature I will use.

The covers below are another simple but powerful series of Penguin designs.

Mindmap

Idea generation

I used the mind map technique to consider the research carried out so far for the book cover series project. I reviewed and updated the mind map periodically throughout my research.

Type and layout assignment 1 - flow

Poster 1 research - flow and visual hierarchy

I thought of 5 ideas for posters so decided to research and develop them all and then select the best 4 ones to work up to final pieces for the brief. The audience for these posters is graphic design students like myself so I wanted to pick imagery and typefaces that I thought might appeal to them.

When reading a page that is text heavy page with little or no points of interest, the Western eye typically reads down from top left to bottom right (Gutenberg diargram). Further research suggested that the eye enters top left  and reads in an F pattern or Z pattern across the page.  Within a graphically designed page, the eye is lead by the visual hierarchy of the document.  It is up to the designer to decide on the flow which is appropriate for the piece, and direct the eye accordingly. 

Generally there should be 3 elements to a poster – headline, content and call to action. Saturated, hot colours advance, cool colours recede.  Contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity contribute to defining a hierarchy.

The rule of thirds grid, and the rule of odds, contribute to visual harmony. Placement and shapes produces movement.  Triangles are more dynamic that squares, which are more dynamic than static circles.

I considered how best to illustrate the title I had chosen, ‘let it flow’.  I could choose a font which imitates flow, eg a molten liquid style font or dripping, but these are rather obvious and did not look sharp enough.  I decided to use an image of something that flowed so I researched images for liquid, molten metal, magma, and place this into the type of the title.

I decided not to actively look at what others might have done to illustrate this concept as I didn't want to be overly influenced by them. I then collected inspiration and assets for imagery, fonts and colours.

The following are possibilities for placing into the title type. The gold image could be used if the colours are converted - either to greyscale or the colours of my palette. These images are from Flickr creative commons.

I initially thought I would use a 2 colour palette of red and black as red is a very strong colour that is the most advancing.  It fits well with the molten liquid theme (magma).  With 2 colours a strong theme will be retained, but with some latitude for lighter colours to show less important items in the visual hierarchy.  I wanted colours that linked in with the flow theme, and molten magma colours are contrasty and advancing.  I found this colour palette (magma) from Adobe Color CC which I thought would reflect my theme well.

I considered what sort of fonts would be demonstrate the feeling of the piece.  Factual, serious but slightly quirky.  I decided using a image to fill the text was suffiently quirky and wanted a bold font to showcase the image, but one with strong lines. A charge font from Hypefortype was considered, along with Age and AT Babyfat, both of which are free fonts. Either Age or AT Babyfat will be used as they both look rounded and liquid, but informational too.

The image below gave me inspiration for my design.

After collecting this material, I was ready to work on my poster design.

Monotone

One colour printing - spot colours

Single spot colour printing is cheaper than CMYK 4 colour. To create the poster below I selected a Pantone spot colour for the text in InDesign - swatch, new colour swatch, Pantone.  I also made tones of this colour and saved them to my swatches. In PhotoShop I changed the image to greyscale, then selected Duotone.  Only colour (the same one as in InDesign) was chosen, making this a monotone image.  I edited the image in curves to make it more contrasty.  The image was saved as a TIFF then loaded into InDesign. The text was coloured using the Pantone spot colour at 100% opacity and also at 25% in the reversed text. In hindsight, I should not have inverted this text as it fights for attention with the title.

Research - Soviet imagery

El Lissitzky

Lissitzky was a Russian graphic designer influenced by the Constructivist movement. Some of his work is shown below.

Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1919):

http://www.designishistory.com/1920/el-lissitzky/

A book cover design:

http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/el/pix/dg1.jpg

The very strong shapes, the red and black palette, the dynamic feel and text set on a diagonal appeals to me.  I would like to incorporate some of this into my designs.

Research for Book Covers

Solzhenitsyn research

Screen shots from Google image searches for Soviet graphic design:

Another screen shot, of Constructivist graphic design:

I particularly like Constructivism.  It was a design movement that started in the 20's and went on until the 1950s in Russia.  It was used extensively for propaganda for the Communist party who led the oppressive regime in power at this time. I like the strong typography and type on a diagonal.  Red, black and off white are the dominant colours which I would like to use.  The typefaces are strictly sans serif, which I will use.