Design Exploration

TYPOGRAPHY: FINAL PROJECT

30.10.2019 - 20.11.2019 (Week 10 - Week 13)

Maisarah bt Muhd Zamri (0335576)
Typography
Final Project

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LECTURES

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INSTRUCTIONS



30.10.2019 (Week 10)
Exercise before the actual project

We were told to bring an A3-ish cardboard, painting tools, a glue gun, and a 4-7 feet stick. We were going to make a placard of our belief/manifesto regarding DESIGN and SOCIETY.
My manifesto is "GOOD DESIGN = GOOD SOCIETY." Very simple, I know. It's because I'm simple minded. But that's the problem; it's simple, so I have to come up with a way to make it stand out.

Fig 1.1 (Placard design sketch 1)

Fig 1.2 (Placard design sketch 2)

Fig 1.3 (Placard design sketch 3)

So the main idea here is to make the background black and the words white. Simple concept of contrast. That way, the words really do pop out. The problem is, I didn't bring any paint. I have black ink, and I own a white marker, so I thought it could work. But as you can see in Fig 1.3, my white marker seem to be running out of ink. Dumb btch was only used ONCE and it's already dying. Useless piece of sht I wasted my money on you. 

Fig 1.4 (Placard design sketch 4)

Fig 1.5 (Placard "society" design sketch)

The placard's background wouldn't be white, because my cardboard is brown in color, and as I mentioned before, I didn't bring paint even though I was told to. Hey, I thought my marker would work. Bad decision making is just part of my personality. Also, I didn't take pictures of the progress of the placard making because I'm stupid, so here's the final product.

Fig 1.6 (Placard - final work)

It's so bad I feel like stabbing my eyes with a pen. There's too much space on the board thanks to bad composition/kerning. Lettering is also ugly as heck. This is what happens when you only use markers to write big things. I could've made the words thicker, but it's already too late when I realize how horrible the placard is. 

"You can redo the boards at home if you're not happy with how it turns out," said Mr Vinod. 

True, I didn't like how my placard turned out. But to redo the thing? Yeah, I hate that more, so goodbye good grades.

06.11.2019 (Week 11) 

Actual Final Project

So apparently the placards were considered like half of our final project. What we have to do now is to digitize it into an A3 poster and fix whatever things we messed up making that thing manually. We have to only use the given 9 typefaces way back from the type expression exercise. Good, now I can make the background black or white like the initial sketches with better letterforms.

Fig 2.1 (Poster designs 1)

Fig 2.2 (Poster designs 2)

Apparently, all caps Garamond is ugly as heck. Me, having no knowledge of how a typeface can look ugly when it's all uppercase, decided to do just that and think it's the best design I have yet. K, that's a lie. I like the designs with Gill Sans Shadowed better. 

In Fig 2.2, you can see that I used alternating point sizes for each letters in the word "society." That's because there's this meme where people repeats what other's say in a mocking tone, and when it's written, the uppercase and lowercase is all over the place. So I just did that. Because society is a joke haha.  

There's a lot of white space in my designs so I have to do something about it. 

Fig 2.3 (Poster designs 3)

Horizontal designs aren't accepted because I didn't need to change the orientation. I've started doing it vertically, so I should stick to it.

Fig 2.4 (Poster designs 4)

The two last designs you see in Fig 2.4 is thanks to my lecturer. The little "i"s represent the "society" because they look like people (pretty sure he got stressed just from looking at my sorry excuse for a poster design and decided to help me save them)

(Unpopular opinion: I actually liked the black n white poster on the left in Fig 2.4)

Fig 2.5 (Poster design - progress)

Fig 2.6 (animation frames)

Fig 2.7 (gif making in Photoshop)

Fig 2.8 (Poster gif - progress)

I was told that the animation looks thoughtless, like I didn't put much effort in it (which I didn't, obviously). *Deep sigh* So now I have to redo the animation.

Fig 2.9 (New animation frames)

Fig 3.1 (Poster final work)

Fig 3.2 (Poster final work - PDF File)

Fig 3.3 (Poster gif)

Fig 3.4 (Final work framed)

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FEEDBACKS

30.10.2019 (Week 10)

• Specific feedback: There's too much space on my placard. It's unsavable and the only way to fix it is to redo the whole thing
• General feedback: (I don't remember anything about the placard itself)

06.11.2019 (Week 11)

• Specific feedback: Read books :( As for the final project, I'll have to choose a different typeface, because the one I'm using is just not working. 
• General feedback: Unrelated to the final project, but compose the phrase 'god is in the kerning' in a way that the phrase is the focus point of the piece and not drowned in the white spaces in the background.

13.11.2019 (Week 12)

• Specific feedback: There’s too much space in my design. I have to try and compose the poster in a way that it wouldn’t leave too much white space. I was then told to do something to depict society.
• General feedback: Put our trafficking knowledge to good use for this final project. When animating, make sure the canvas is A4 sized and 72 dpi resolution. For the animation, set the color mode to RGB.

20.11.2019 (Week 13)

• Specific feedback: Mr Vinod and Mr Shamsul told me to get rid of the white outlines on my design. They also said that my animation could be better.
• General feedback: Our final compilation post has to has a JPEG, a PDF file, and an animation (if there's one for the particular project) of the finished product for each of the exercises/projects we've done.

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REFLECTIONS

Experience: This is the most trouble I've had with an assignment (in this class) and it's not fun :( nothing in life is fun anymore to be fair

Observations: "Design a poster" sounds easy, but it's not. Everything was easier when I was oblivious and had close to zero knowledge about typography. Ignorance truly is bliss.

Findings: Hard. It's hard. As expected for the Final Project.

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FURTHER READINGS

when you try so hard, but you don't succeed...