Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Computers Are Microwaves

Typography
Project 1B:
After we completed our typeface design, we had to choose another students typeface and design something using their typeface. I chose Meghan Obrien's, called Spooked.

I thought Meghan's typeface was just dying to be hand drawn, and I came up with the idea of technology vs. hand made, making the point that there are some aspects to hand drawn designs that just cant be reproduced with a computer. So I found this wonderful quote and went with it! I hand drew the type (tracing over a printed out version, so I could get the proportions perfect since Meghan had spent so long designing them). I decided to go with a underwater theme because Meghan's typeface was so organic, and also I just love deep sea creatures. Around the quote I hand drew deep sea creatures and then scanned my drawing into the computer and placed a scanned in image of ocean water I found in an old book from the library behind the drawing. After printing out the design, I thinly traced each letter in black ink to give it another hand drawn effect, and to make the letters pop.




And here are just a couple "glam shots" of my typeface.


Friday, September 11, 2009

First-ies of Junior Year

Typography
Project 1: Display Face
For our first typography project, I had to revisit my typeface I designed last semester and revise it to make it better, and then transfer it into Typetool, which makes the typeface an actual font you can type with. I revised my typeface a lot. I can't believe some of the things I didnt do when designing it the first time around, it is now ten times better. I was also lucky I had designed a typeface based off the square because it made transferring it into Typetool a lot easier. My side bearings for all the letters were the same, which saved me hours of work.

This is my work document in Illustrator. It has all the variations of letters I did, as well as the letters put together to form words to make sure they work together well.

And this is my final typeface, including numbers and 12 additional characters. It is named Valor because originally the face was based on my self-defense class, which is why the design is so bold, and sturdy. Valor is the characteristic of being able to face danger without fear, which is what my self-defense class (and this typeface) is all about.
...and maybe a little about darth vader.


Studio
Project 1: Experience of Search
I was assigned to a group, and we were assigned the experience of searching. We then had to individually choose an experience we had with searching for something and design something to reflect that experience. For weeks I had been hearing about health care reform, and wanted to have an opinion on it because it seemed very important, but was just uninformed. So I chose the search for an opinion on health care reform. And I went through that process, researching and documenting everything. In the end, I came up with this concept map to show my experience.
I would post the PDF so you could read it, but blogspot doesnt read PDFs. It has a lot of good information on it though. My main focus was separating facts from myths. Hopefully reform will start to happen soon!


Imaging
Project 1:
We are currently learning Flash, so I don't really have anything to post for Imaging right now.