type findings (more)

How can I capture the dialogue of a film in a single frame? the first set is the movie City of Lost Children I photographed 1/3 of the movie's subtitles. I fidgeted with the opacity and layer property options to try and find the best combination of viewing all the type at once. They are in the order which I did them, so you can see the progression from first to last experiment.


On the second set of experiments, I thought why not get rid of the noise in the picture and deal with type alone? What can I do to compare america english with other languages? I took two songs, one from Tool, and the other from Nancy Ajram. Again I messed around with layer properties and opacity to get different results. The cool thing about Nancy's song is it's in Arabic, so you can compare Arabic type with English. I had to put color behind the top sets, otherwise you wouldn't be able to see any type at all. I was going to do this to a whale song, but it was just the same thing over and over again, "vouwomp, vouwomp. ooooooooorrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeee".

type findings

Known for their packaging, Non Format combines simplified shapes with texture and color as typography. Jon and Kjell started making record sleeve covers for independent musicians which was great for them because they had as much freedom as they wanted. For specific projects they create their own fonts. Jon's favorite typeface is avant garde and Kjell's is hermes.
After reading a quick bio about them, they like simple but effective design. The most important thing to them is Heirarchy, and after that they use as few layers as possible especially when the layers are really detailed. "It’s really important to decide on the most important thing you want to communicate first and then make it work really hard." If your design is too jumbled with details of type and image, it will distract you from the message. "Also, it’s really important to remember that almost all design projects result in a finished object – whether that’s music packaging, a book, a magazine, a packet of crisps or a box of tissues. These objects are made up of a number of surfaces that should all work together to tell a story. The hands and the eyes work together over these surfaces, so the paper quality and texture is just as important as any print or production techniques employed, or choice of imagery, graphic elements or typography." I think the work they produce pushes type legebility, as well as has a nice aesthetically pleasing look to the geometric type.
Although I am not working with packaging, I enjoy the way their simplified type looks next to the images they produce. I am currently working on creating my own, geometric type but instead of having it a solid field of color I am working on packing texture, pattern and imagery into the shapes. I started creating type for the book 'the old man and the sea' and the images and textures i drew for the letters had to do with the content of the book (rope, wood, water, fish scales etc). I'm also working with how to show time within one frame. This really doesn't have anything to do with what non format is doing or even how it looks aesthetically, but i'm hoping somehow to combine the two. I'm photographing the subtitles of movies and stacking each line on top of each other to see how it looks. and voila, we have the whole movie condensed down into one image. I've learned through research that grids are still 'in', big flat color geometric type is cool overseas, and creating a legibal typeface is difficult when I apply my own restricitons for making it. I started with squares and the only thing i'm allowed to add to it are two size circles around the edges. This makes the letters 'g' and 'q' very tough to produce. I really need to sit down and think about these things more thoroughly.

Here are some type experiments i have been playing with:

I started looking at how to capture film into a single frame. this seems to be far off from typography.. but my original thought was to mask the 'movie' with the simple type I created for the movie poster/dvd/cover.the three frames are a forth of the movie The Professional and the bottom image is a frame stretch for some of the episode of south park. it might look nice, but i realized it really didn't have any application with typography...back to the drawing boards.

more iterations...

I wasn't really feeling the dungeon master theme.. it didn't turn out the way i imagined, so i began something more simple. by doing this hopefully i could focus more on the information graphics that will be in the website. i tired a more ornamental approach approach, but i soon noticed it was looking too digital. after discussing this with a few of my classmates, they suggested i incorporate my illustration skills into the layout.



the shapes of the keys now influenced my drawing style. out of the three things i drew on this example, only one works. but the point is i know that it should work if i apply the right shapes to the right places. the main bar i show in the images below doesn't fit with the other drawings on the page. the way the keys are orientated on the page need to be changed, as well as work on the background image. the digital infographic also looks strange aesthetically, so i am spending the rest of the night illustrating a couple for class tomorrow morning.

just got lockedddd

three iterations for the look and feel of my key site. also shows process that i build my own boxes digitally through photographing the boxes that lead type sits in. the photographs are the rendering style because you miss fine aesthetic details, texture and color if i were to draw them by hand. there are also so many interesting shapes i couldn't produce easily with drawings than I could with photography. by using the wood separators i am able to create a housing for my keys to be grouped in any organization that i choose. i realize the website navigation wouldn't say 'home/one/two/three' these are just place holders for other key terms and sorting methods. so far i'm not liking the feel. reminds me of a dungeon masters room.

process of photographing technique

index page 1:
index page 2:
index page 3:
these three are macro views of my potential website. the bottom image is the micro view and infographic about history of they key. cropped. these will be incorporated in the micro stages to call out what the infographic is referring to.

typographic trends

i have been noticing an increasing number of self made banners for the new internet dj. the internet is a place where people can post their mixes from their very own home. words just wont get you noticed. we are generation of visual attention spans. what a better way to get noticed than to make a bad ass banner or flyer for your new track? the younger generations are finding ways to share information and files all over the world. i would assume most of the kids today don't get their music from shops, cds, vinals, but rather downloading single tracks from the internet. that's how i do it, and that's how i play my sets. the graphics for this kind of scene i believe started in europe, mainly england because a lot of hot dance tracks are produced there. i don't know if we (americans) aren't establishing some of these styles, but i sure as hell don't see them around here. companies that package music overseas have caught onto this trend and now on the album art feature type that is so simple and smooth you could shine my head with it. i would describe it as a serge of texture, deconstruction, and various geometric shapes. not to mention colors that will make your eyelids explode off your face. the bold colors are probably due to the fact it's what they see when those young whippersnappers go out partying during the wee hours of the morning. there are also elements of fragmentation and ambiguity. they are seeing how little they can show and still have a level of read. there are no bowls and the letters are primarily cut out of a single block. another big thing is to use fields of color that layer on top of one another to create abstract forms. a couple of companies that are doing it are: Build, Sarah Haraigue, the northern front and Atriva Design. i think it's important because we see these people trying to push the level of legibility. how much do we really need to see of a letter or word before we move onto the next one. i remember hearing about a study in which a group of students took words and mixed up the spelling except the first and last letters. while looking over the words, the subjects read phrases and didn't even notice the letters were mixed up. there is a level of familiarity with type, words, and sounds around us that we fill in as we go assuming it's correct. after looking at the letterforms i got to thinking 'everything is just so damn simplified and clean'. how much can i add to the composition and still have a level of read? perhaps i can still create simplified letterforms out of the piles of crap i'm going to dump on the page. my hope is to have the mass amounts of material aid in keeping the letterforms simple. hope to have very detailed, complex shapes building a part of something bigger, more beautiful and smooth. this also allows for multiple levels of read. beautiful from afar, cutthroat as you come closer. just as the pixel works, it's not smooth sailing, but tons of little squares. a grid structure so tight it makes nick karn look smooth. i can't decide why it is important. i guess we all need a sense of moving forward as if not to seem we are stuck in one place. this is why we have the urgency to create new things all the time.

more to come soon..

Final Show Opener

made this by hand.. stop motion with these paper cut out puppets with hinges at the joints. the type was the only digital aspect to the video. it's a review show opener about soccer. preferably listen to this with headphones on or good speakers (with bass) because there are tones so low you can't hear it with regular computer speakers.

FINAL SHOW OPENER

adam post your crit hereeeee.