Alphabet Soup - Visual Thinking Finals

Design Skills - Alphabet Soup - Visual Thinking Final developments

Presented bellow are my final analogue drawn 10cm x 10cm examples of my visual responses to this brief. I explained there concepts in the previous post but there has been a few changes in these final examples. The first one is emulated in the first example, my initial idea was to create an uppercase out of a lowercase but playing about with this idea i came up with combining 2 spliced elements of separate letters to create a representation of a 'y'. I like this idea but its legibility is the problem. The final example comes from the mirror idea, i liked the idea of splicing a letter up so i spliced up a lower case 'i' squared off the top of the stem to create a more square serif and added bold weight to the element then mirrored the spliced section on a visible baseline mirror point. 

My favorites are the 'Z' and the bold weight 'i' and these are what I will go onto create a full range of letterforms in a digital output. Although I do like the handmade analogue feel of this and the contrast of the black on the recycled grey card is something I like. It sort of contrasts the old with the new, as Garamond is an old style serif font I thought I would use a paper-stock that emulates an old feel to contrast with the bold contemporary drawing style. An element of age needed to come into this due to the typeface been based on a punch cutter  An old style type press machine. 

In terms of use this would work best in a body text to keep legibility good when letterforms are placed next to each other in sequence. As mentioned my favorite elements are how the 'Z' uses an axis point as a stem as well as a visible mirror point, and I love the simplicity of the bold spliced 'i'. Its a very stable letterform due to adding bold weight to the stem and squaring off the top of the stem and the serif isnt as rounded on the brackets. What i would have liked to do tho was take the apeloig inspired 'a' into further development as this isnt like my usual style, its very abstract and fluid in its motion and this is something I will keep in mind for future developments were I see fit. I would also experiment with printing methods more to obtain a more broad range of final outcomes but apart from that Im pleased overall with the completion of my first brief and look forward to digitally manipulating it now. 

In terms of inspiration if you look into the inspiration post I made I soaked up a few concept ideas from this. For example the repeated dots to create the color blocking in the spliced 'i' is inspired by the use of dots in the lego letterpress piece made by Levi Bunyam. The element of splicing and fragmenting arrangments used throughout some of the letterforms in inspired by the sculpture created by Valee Duhamel. Unfortunately i could not use bold colors within the typeface due to legibility issues and how the typeface would work as a body text. Finally the last inspiration piece came from the combination of Apeloig Drops typeface which inspired my abstract 'a' and the whole digital bold feel came from the threesix font i found on typetoken. Along with underlying influences from initial research into Garamond and word association as is all described in previous posts. 

Below are visual responses in terms of trying out new things, I tried out a range of paper stocks to create the old feel i desired. The brown worked well but to me felt too 'crafty' so to speak and a little to hand made which interferes with the crispness needed to emulate my word symmetry. I liked the idea of stippling the color in but again this contradicted the crisp feel I wanted to emulate. The use of different paper stocks was recommended in my crit, the print method i tried out still used fine liner but created a kind of half tone through the use of 'stippling' it was inspired by the legopress letterform in my inspiration research. 

Below are examples of using type weight on my chosen stock for final production. Ranging from light, regular and bold I feel the bold works well and creates a nice contrast through the tonal ranges of the black type on the grey background.