Advanced Typography - Task 1: Exercises
30.08.2023 - 13.09.2023 / Week 01 - Week 03
Ilhan Rayan bin Khairul Anwar / 0361205
Advanced Typography / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media
Task 1 - Exercises
LECTURES
INSTRUCTIONS
PRACTICAL
TASK 1 / Exercise 1: Typographic Systems
For our first exercise, we were introduced to eight typographic systems which are Axial, Radial, Dilatational, Random, Grid, Modular, Transitional and Bilateral. The objective was to recreate these designs in Adobe InDesign using the content given in the MIB. We were also instructed to watch the InDesign demonstration videos in the lecture playlist for guidance and assistance.
We were also given these guidelines to follow:
- Size 200 x 200 mm
- Colours: Black and additional colour
- Minor graphical elements
Initial Process
Before I started designing each of the systems, I decided to create all of the pages that I'd be using to design the different systems and their variations. I also decided to do three designs per system to provide myself with the challenge of coming up with different designs.
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| Figure 1.1: InDesign Pages, Week 1 (29/8/23) |
I also added in labels for each group so that I wouldn't get confused on which system I was working on, as well as giving me an overview of what I have and haven't done yet.
Experimentation Period
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| Figure 1.2: Axial System Experiments, Week 1 (30/8/23) |
For the first designs that I made for the Axial System, I followed the notes that I wrote from the video lecture we were provided. I based my first design off of an example design that I saw from a past student's portfolio. I saw that they had a X-shaped design with their system so I wanted to do something similar to it, though what I did instead was changing the point in which the axial bends, causing it to look less parallel.
For my second design, I decided to do have the axial system start to bend back and forth since that's how the system works. The main issue that I found with these designs and with the whole exercise in general was trying to figure out how to fit in the time slots in a way that looked pleasing. For most of my designs I decided to just have them be listed together rather than separate as it made the most sense logically, in my opinion.
For the third design I chose to just follow a simple axial design with it going down the middle without any bends or curves. I ended up liking this design the most and noted it down as my potential submission for my final design after I make some changes and tidy it up.
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| Figure 1.3: Radial Experiments, Week 1 (2/9/23) |
The next system that I decided to do was the radial system, which took me some time to figure out as this was one of the systems that I liked the least alongside the dilatational and transitional, but since I didn't have to wrap text around anything for this one I decided to do this one next. Because the main elements of this system follow the idea of having the elements extend and spread out from a point of origin, it created the appearance of sunlight with the way the rays of light extend from the sun. It took me some time to come up with three different designs for this system as once I created the design on the right first, I spent time looking at other example portfolios to come up with ideas. Despite having access to other examples, the designs on the left and the middle ended up being fairly weaker compared to my first design.
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| Figure 1.4: Random Experiments, Week 1 (2/9/23) |
After the radial system, I skipped past dilatational and continued with random as I wanted to save dilatational and transitional for last and get the easier systems ones out of the way. I found this system to be fun despite being told that it takes a certain level of effort to effectively utilise this system to it's fullest. Because it was random, it allowed for me to come up with designs that wouldn't fit with any of the other systems which lead to the three designs seen above. The design on the left was inspired by the blurred effects that I made last semester for Typography, I didn't have any specific plan in mind when I made the first two designs and instead let myself free flow my design process.
For my third design however, I was inspired by a past student's design which featured jumbled text that created a shocking effect which inspired me. I didn't want to try and fully recreate their design so I opted to do something similar in style with the important elements at full opacity while the repeating elements would be in a lowered opacity to create a jumbled effect.
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| Figure 1.5: Grid System Experiments, Week 1 (3/9/23) |
Once I finished the random system, I moved onto the grid system which contrasted it in both structure and design limitations. Due to the simplicity of this system, I was able to work through it quickly and create three designs that I enjoyed making. The first design was based on a past student's design cross design but inverted as I personally prefer to have the headlines and titles be near the top of the page whereas theirs had the headline near the bottom.
For my second design, I actually based the design off of a newspaper, with the main title at the top, the headline underneath it and the other elements in place where larger bodies of text would be in a normal newspaper layout. Because of how little text I had, I couldn't fill out all of the open space and I didn't want to increase the size of the other elements as it would take away emphasis from the title. For my final design I decided to do something simpler and just have two horizontal grids and five vertical grids, from there I reshaped it to what I wanted and removed them from the page as I wanted to have one design that was cleaner and didn't require having the bars.
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| Figure 1.6: Bilateral System Experiments, Week 2 (4/9/23) Once I was done with the grid system I moved onto the bilateral system, which was similar to the axial system a straight centre line instead of a curved line. Thanks to the simplicity of this system, I made quick work of it and made three designs that symmetrically followed the axial down the centre which left the sides open. My third design on the right was a rework of my first design where I wanted to see how big I could make the elements on the page look without taking up too much space, in my opinion this design ended up being far better than my first design as I felt that it looked more refined. For the second design in the middle, I chose to emphasise bilateral system's ability to have text elements stem out from the centre line which allowed for me to place the dates on the sides, allowing for a design that felt less compact and more open despite it taking up more space in my opinion. |
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| Figure 1.7: Modular System Experiments, Week 2 (4/9/23) |
For the modular system, I found it to be quite similar to the grid system in the sense that they both utilise standardised elements to create a system that was understandable and easily interchangeable. For the first design on the left, I wanted to experiment with changing the background of the page and having all of the boxed elements stand out like they were a light in the shadow. While it does look nice, I feel that it would have been much better off with a plain background instead rather than a coloured one, and if I were to include coloured boxes they would be for adding elements to the piece rather than dominating it.
For the second design, I created a layout similar to the bilateral system but with the focus on the open spaces between each horizontal line rather than having the elements be lined up alongside it.
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| Figure 1.8: Layout Screenshot, Week 2 (4/9/23) |
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| Figure 1.9: Dilatational System Experiments, Week 2 (5/9/23) |
Finally we reach dilatational, I chose to save this and transitional for last as I wanted to get the easier systems out of the way before spending time figuring out how to utilise this system. After looking up a tutorial on youtube, what I ended up doing was using the "type on a path" tool in InDesign and used it to write on circles that I would turn invisible so that it would look neater. I honestly didn't know what to do for this system, even after looking at example student's work I was still stuck as I their designs were really good and I didn't want to blatantly copy off of them for my designs.
The first design was mainly me experimenting with the type on a path tool to figure out how much I could stretch the circle before making the text look odd. My second design was my best in my opinion as I decided to experiment more with the ability to flip the area in which the text would appear on the path.
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| Figure 1.10: Transitional System Experiments, Week 2 (5/9/23) |
For the transitional system, I chose to use the pen tool to try and create the wavy effect that I saw in the example designs provided in the youtube lecture. At first I was confused with this system as I thought it required the designer to use bending shapes to create a wavy effect for the system but when I looked at the past students' final submissions for this system, they featured no curved elements at all. It was after I reread everything that I finally understood that the transitional system was primarily about layering information into separate bands rather than curving everything. Once I had this in mind, I created two designs that mimicked the two styles that I noticed which lead to my third design combining the two styles together. For the third design I tried to make it look like it's rising up since one of Taylor's University mottos is to "Rise With The Best."
Finalisation Period
Once I finished experimenting with all eight systems, I looked through all of them and selected one from each of the systems to submit as my final after I tidy it up and add in extra details that I come up with. While some of my designs remained mostly the same, I'll provide explanations for the ones that had some design changes.
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| Figure 2.1: Updated Axial System, Week 3 (11/9/23) |
For the Axial System, I decided to use my third design and the main change that I made to it was adding in the pink square next to the "The Design School, Taylor's University" text.
Figure 2.2: Updated Random Systems, Week 3 (12/9/23)
The next system that I updated was the Random System where the main change was that I added in the pink colour to the background text as it was purely black and white. However when I showed this to Mr. Vinod he explained that it didn't feel random enough so on the right is my updated version where I added in more background text to try and fill out the space.
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| Figure 2.3: Updated Grid System, Week 3 (11/9/23) |
For the Grid System, I swapped the "Taylor's University" title and the "All Ripped Up" title since it felt weird to have the title be lower than the location in terms of layout.
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| Figure 2.4: Updated Bilateral System, Week 3 (12/9/23) |
One of the main pieces of feedback that I was given by Mr. Vinod when he saw my work was that my text was too big in certain systems and that I needed to shrink them down. One such system was the bilateral system as the "All Ripped Up" title went across the whole screen which was apparently too large for the design. So I reduced the size so that it would fit inside the margins of the design. Another critique he had was that the bottom section with the dates and lecturers was too congested and packed together so I spaced them out a bit more.
FINAL Task 1 - Exercise 1: Typographic Systems
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| Figure 3.1: Axial System Final (JPG), Week 3 (11/9/23) |
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| Figure 3.2: Radial System Final (JPG), Week 3 (11/9/23) |
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| Figure 3.3: Dilatational System Final (JPG), Week 3 (12/9/23) |
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| Figure 3.4: Random System Final (JPG), Week 3 (12/9/23) |
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| Figure 3.5: Grid System Final (JPG), Week 3 (12/9/23) |
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| Figure 3.6: Transitional System Final (JPG), Week 3 (11/9/23) |
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| Figure 3.7: Modular System Final (JPG), Week 3 (12/9/23) |
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| Figure 3.8: Bilateral System Final (JPG), Week 3 (12/9/23) |
Figure 3.9: Final Task 1 / Exercise 1: Typographic Systems (PDF), Week 3 (15/9/23)
TASK 1 / Exercise 2: Type & Play (Part 1)
For our second exercise, we were tasked with finding, dissecting, identifying and analysing an image with repeating patterns. From there we would then form five letters using the identified patterns. For this exercises I was originally going to use a painting of a dragon from my father's art gallery / studio since I found it in my camera roll and I liked the design.
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| Figure 4.1: Dragon Painting, Week 2 (6/9/23) |
At first, I was going to do what I did for our Task 3 last semester where we had to create letterforms using unorthodox tools and polish them digitally on Illustrator. My plan was to use the shape technique where I would use the rectangle shape tool to create general boxes around what I saw as letters, from there I would have arranged them next to each other and shape them into the shapes that I saw.
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| Figure 4.2: Dragon Painting First Extraction, Week 2 (6/9/23) |
However as I was going through this process, I came to the realisation that this would be a lot more difficult than anticipated and that tracing it out using the pen tool would be easier even though I am not a fan of using it.
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| Figure 4.3: Dragon Painting Updated Extraction Outline, Week 2 (6/9/23) |
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| Figure 4.4: Extracted Letters "DUCES," Week 2 (6/9/23) |
After lowering the reference image's opacity to 50% so that I could see clearer, I drew out the shapes of what I saw as letterforms from the dragon and came up with five letters, D, U, C, E, and S. I planned on creating something related to the phrase "duces" which is a slang way of saying goodbye. However as I tried to come up with a way to shape it into a proper letterform, I came to the conclusion that it was too inconsistent and wouldn't look nice. I was stuck here for a bit before I decided to read through an article written by Mr. Vinod about this exercise and how previous students underwent this in the past when this exercise was newly added to BDCM's courses.
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| Figure 4.5: Finding Type Example Screenshot, Week 3 (11/9/23) |
After seeing the kind of images that previous students used as well as the information provided in the article, I decided to start from the beginning and looked for a new image that had consistent and repetitive patterns in order to create letterforms that looked similar to one another. My original idea was to use animal print but I realised that it might be a popular choice so I opted for another option which was to use a close up of a tree, specifically the bark and log of a tree since they have pretty strong rectangular shapes from what I know of.
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| Figure 4.6: Wood Image, Week 3 (11/9/23) |
Using this image that I found online, I started looking through it to see what kind of letterforms I could extract from this image. Going off of the strong lines in the log, I knew that my letterforms would be sharp in some form. Rather than using my computer and mouse to try and create outlines, I downloaded Adobe Illustrator on my iPad and used it there since I had an apple pen that would make this process much easier.
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| Figure 4.7: Wood Image Extraction, Week 3 (11/9/23) |
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| Figure 4.8: Wood Image Extraction, Week 3 (11/9/23) |
After looking at the image from different angles, I came up with six letters but I decided to get rid of the last letter as we were recommended to only do five letters, though we were allowed to do more however that would mean more work and I didn't want to do more than required. Along with that, I didn't like the way it turned out so getting rid of it worked best for me.
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| Figure 5.1: Extracted Letters "MHLCY," Week 3 (12/9/23) |
After resizing the five letters to make them the same size as each other, I started thinking about which font I would use as my reference for shaping this to become more cohesive and consistent. After looking at the ten fonts we were provided for Typography, I decided to use Futura STD (Book) as my reference since I liked the lack of serifs in it's design as well as it's simplicity.
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| Figure 5.2: Reference Font (Futura STD Book), Week 3 (12/9/23) |
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| Figure 5.3: Progress Overview, Week 3 (12/9/23) |
Here is an overview of my attempts and work progress in Illustrator, the art boards are 1000px in height and 3000px in width.
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| Figure 5.4: Realigned & Straightened Out Letterforms, Week 3 (12/9/23) |
Using the grid guidelines as a way to help me create the cap and baseline for the shapes, I reformatted my extracted letterforms and deleted a few anchor points that were unnecessary and realigned most of them so that they looked like proper letters, though they were still rough.
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| Figure 5.5: Sharpened & Stemmed Letterforms, Week 3 (12/9/23) |
In my second revision, I took a strong turn and reshaped all of the letters so that their stems would be of equal size so that it would look more concise. I did this by using the stem in my "L" as the reference and going from there, I added in guidelines for each of the stems and moved, deleted and altered their anchor points so that it would become much more angular. I also tried to make all of the letterforms roughly the same size as seen with my "H" since that was comparatively thinner than the other letters. I only did this so that they would all become more consistent with each other as once I was done with this I would move onto adding back in the characteristics from the extracted font.
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| Figure 5.6: Character Re-Added to Letterforms, Week 3 (12/9/23) |
The two main characteristics that I wanted to bring back was it's sharpness and the curvature from the way the wood bent. When I presented this to Mr. Vinod he began explaining to us that we should try and focus on the actual shapes in the image rather than the cracks and crevices as the shapes hold the character while the crevices don't.
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| Figure 5.7: Attempt at Finding Letterforms, Week 3 (16/9/23) |
I tried to go back and find shapes using the same image however I only found mostly "N" shaped patterns in the image. At this point I didn't have enough time to try and search for an entirely new image with a new set of shapes that I could then transform into letterforms that also retain their original characteristics so I ultimately chose to stick with what I had. After that, I moved onto the next part of this exercise which was to take our text and turn it into a 1024x1024 px movie poster
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| Figure 5.8: Finding Type Poster 1, Week 4 (18/9/23) |
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| Figure 5.9: Finding Type Poster 2, Week 4 (18/9/23) |
I came up with two designs for my movie posters, one using the image that I traced for my letterforms and another image that I liked and thought would work well with what I had in mind. I wanted to do something horror related since the word "mylch" is similar to the word "mulch." After we presented out poster designs to the class Mr. Vinod informed me that the size of the letters for Mylch were too big and that they needed to be smaller.
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| Figure 5.10: Updated Finding Type Poster, Week 4 (20/9/23) |
FINAL Task 1 - Exercise 2: Finding Type
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| Figure 6.1: Compiled Process (JPG), Week 3 (12/9/23) |
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| Figure 6.2: Final Type Design (JPG), Week 3 (12/9/23) |
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| Figure 6.3: Final Type Poster (JPG), Week 4 (20/9/23) |
Figure 6.4: Final Type Design (PDF), Week 3 (12/9/23)
Figure 6.5: Final Type Poster (PDF), Week 4 (20/9/23)
TASK 1 / Exercise 3: HONOR Competition
Our third task that came later in the semester was to create a design for either a phone wallpaper, a phone background, a watch design, an open design, or an animated design based around one of three themes provided, those being Cultural Prosperity, Renewal of Life, or Genesis. I have been fairly vocal about this in the past but I am not a fan of being forced into taking part in competitions for a class so the work I made for this exercise is simple at best. I knew I would never be close to winning but I wanted to submit something that I could at least find interesting for this project, so I decided to do a watch design on Cultural Prosperity.
For the culture I chose to do Dia de los Muertos, which is the "Day of the Dead," a holiday celebrated in Mexico during the first two days of November and celebrates the dead by leaving offerings at altars usually built at home or at their grave and saying prayers so that their spirit would come visit them and know that people still love them. Having studied Spanish and Mexican culture in the past as well as being somewhat fluent in speaking Spanish, I decided it would be the best option for me as I was not well versed in any of the other choices. My illustrative skills still aren't the greatest so I opted to use photoshop for the competition.
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| Figure 7.1: Honor Competition Base Elements, Week 5 (28/9/23) |
I started by researching elements that were associated to the Day of the Dead and one of the biggest ones that I knew of was the use of marigolds which are used to guide spirits to the human world because of their vibrant colour. After looking for images of marigolds online I found ones that were high quality and used the lasso tool to extract them from their original images. The second element that I wanted to use was the calavera, which basically means "skull" in Spanish and are used as a celebratory and welcoming gesture for the souls of the dead to come and visit the Land of the Living.
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| Figure 7.2: Honor Competition Template, Week 6 (6/10/23) |
Using the template we were provided with for the competition, I decided to turn the marigolds into a wreathe to go along the frame of the watch and place the calavera in the middle.
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| Figure 7.3: Marigold Ring & Calavera, Week 6 (6/10/23) |
I decided to use the example watch design they provided as a reference for me to shape and design the watch face. From there I had to think about how I would represent the watch hands in this design and the most obvious choice for me was to use skeletal hands that would point towards each of the numbers on the watch.
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| Figure 7.4: Skeletal Hands Added, Week 6 (6/10/23) |
The next step was to create the numbers that would be featured in the design, so I went to google and looked for Mexican-style fonts and found one called "Ambystoma Mexicanum," which suited what I needed so I added it to my font book and applied it to the watch design. I decided to colour the numbers red, orange, and blue as those are the most common colours used for Day of the Dead. Once I completed the overall design I added in a background and made some adjustments to the elements so that they would look more vibrant and catch the focus of the viewer.
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| Figure 7.5: Honor Competition Full Design, Week 6 (6/10/23) |
Once I was finished with this, I applied the design onto the template that was provided for us in the website. We were also allowed to design the strap for the watch but I wasn't interested in doing that and didn't have the time nor patience to come up with something.
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| Figure 7.6: Honor Competition Watch Design Template, Week 6 (7/10/23) |
FINAL Task 1 - Exercise 3: HONOR Competition
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| Figure 7.7: HONOR Competition Full Watch Design Final (JPG), Week 6 (7/10/23) |
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| Figure 7.8: HONOR Competition Design Final (JPG), Week 6 (7/10/23) |
Figure 7.9: HONOR Competition Full Design Final (PDF), Week 6 (7/10/23)
FEEDBACK
Week 1
General Feedback: Introductory Week
Specific Feedback: None
Week 2
General Feedback: Add lines to separate each of the systems so that it’s easier to identify which is which. Downsizing the numbers by roughly .5 can reduce the aspect of it looking too big when compared to normal text. Graphical elements can overwhelm the content of the page, if it complements the piece then it’s good but if it takes your attention away from the content then it is not good. Stick to one shade of the colour. If the baseline of the text is on the line, it reduces the readability. Balancing the colour with white can be good.
Specific Feedback: The headlines are too huge, use the recommended font size of 8-12 or shrink it down. The circle for radial is too distracting. The random system isn’t random enough. Bilateral is too congested at the bottom.
Week 3
General Feedback: The more time you spend on it, the better the outcome will be as seeing your work with a pair of fresh eyes can help you see new things. The process is what we go through but in that process, there’s room for imagination and change until our final version. Manmade designs with a specifically finalised shape doesn’t hold much room for refinement, though it’s still acceptable. We should be looking at the overall shapes and creating something form that rather than using the outlines and crevices of something.
Specific Feedback: We should be looking at the overall shapes and creating something form that rather than using the outlines and crevices of something as the nature of the object is in the texture rather than the object itself.
Week 4
General Feedback: We should include short text / value statements explaining our word marks. A common mistake students make is that we shouldn’t explain what is already shown, we should be explaining what we can’t see at the moment. What we think is that everybody understands design and can tell the difference between good design and bad design. Just because something is good and looks good doesn’t mean that they’ll like, how we sell it can change that. Our designs should have one specific idea rather than trying to incorporate multiple characteristics in one. Structure comes first, flourishes come later.
Specific Feedback: The MYLCH text is too big, make it a bit smaller. The Testament design can be done, however I’m not executing the form well. If I’m basing it off of a strong band then that is how I will be perceived. This project is meant to represent me and who I am.
REFLECTION
Experience
Coming back to Typography after two months was interesting to say the least, it felt great to get back into the swing of things and this class helped me get back into the groove of having to do work. I found this exercise to be quite entertaining and more fun than the work we were given last semester for Typography. I liked that we were provided with a bit more freedom with our work even though we had much more work to do.
Observation
I found experimenting with the eight typographic systems to be interesting as it provided us with a better understanding of how each system is different from one another and how each of them have their pros and cons. I personally found radial, dilatational, and transitional to be my least favourite as they dealt with curved text lines which I'm personally not a fan of as they can change the whole flow of something and don't look as nice when combined with straightened lines most of the time. That's my opinion however. Another thing that I found intriguing was during the second exercise with how letterforms can be found almost everywhere and can be crafted and transformed into something great.
Findings
At first, I thought that having a specified structure for something would limit how we could build and construct our layouts. But as I experimented and explored more with the work, I found it interesting how limitation can lead to imagination and having to work with what we're dealt with. Overall I enjoyed this task, granted I didn't enjoy the amount of work we were told to do within a one week timeframe since apparently Mr. Vinod wants for us to have more time with our final project, but I'm not one to argue with my lecturers and overall I enjoyed the creative process of this task.
FURTHER READINGS
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| Figure 7.1: Finding Type Article Screenshot, Week 3 (11/9/23) |
This article from Kreatif Beats was written by Mr. Vinod himself and it goes over the process of how he created the Finding Type exercise for the BDCM course as well as providing previous student's examples and step-by-step progress to show how it's properly done. I found this article to be really helpful for me as I was originally going to use a painting of a dragon for my piece but was struggling to create shapes that really worked well together.
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| Figure 7.2: Finding Type Article Image Deconstruction Screenshot, Week 3 (11/9/23) |
After reading about how to find an image with strong and consistent patterns and to deconstruct it properly, I went back and searched for a new image to use that suited this task better.
Not only was this article really useful for me, but being able to see the kind of work other students did in the past provided me with inspiration on what I can use as my image which gave me a better understanding of this exercise's parameters.
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| Figure 7.3: Finding Type Article Example Extraction, Week 3 (11/9/23) |
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