Unit 2: Visual Thinking

visualthinking

extending your visual awareness

Task...

Using our distinctive letter produced in the previous task, we have Ayeshawith Ford-Hayles to produce an A6 postcard the image on one side and a brief description of our word on the other.

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ContentsPage Distinctive Characters...

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Postcard...

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Verneacular Letterforms... 24 Workshops... 36 Exhibition...

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Lectures...

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Evaluation... 48

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Distinctive Characters 4

Task...

In groups of two, we had to choose an initial letter at random and then research different terminologies and glossaries to develop a word that is related to the letter. We also had to choose a size in which our final piece would be. It could be either Caps or lower case, and made out of anything. Christiana and i chose the letter R in the size 150mm.

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Word Bank: At the start of this task Christiana and I went around our class and asked them what the first word they thought of that begun with R. As the more popular words got repeated quite a lot, we looked in the dictionary and also online for word that we would be able to work around. These are a few of the words that we came up with:

-Rope -Robot -Ridiculous -Round -Radio -Radiance -Rotation -Red -Real -Relax -Religion -React -Rise 6

-Realism -Receive -Revoke -Rotund -Rebound -Right -Rain -Rough -Royal -Royalty -Rocket -Remove -Reject

-Rinse -Ripple -Road -Rock -Rose -Rotate -Recycle -Raabbit -Rank -Reveal -Reflection -Replace -Ruler

Reflection The idea behind this design was to have a mosaic style letter using either reflective plastic, card, or smashed mirror pieces. It would be a 2D shape and in the exact 150mm in size.

Rise This would be a stop frame animation of an acrylic or clear R form being filled with a coloured liquid to show the letter form being completely filled. We could have to present this in the form of a small poster or just have a half filled 3D letter.

Recycle The 3D letter form would be made from a range of recyclable materials such as Corrugated card, bottle tops, newspapers and cans. Depending on what materials we use to make it, it may be difficult to make in the correct size of 150mm but we could photograph it and resize it.

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Ascender line

x-Height

Choosing Type Ascender

Shoulder

Counter

Bracket

Bar

Serif

Base line

Stem

Teminal

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Descender line

Bowl

Loop

R

Minion Pro

R

Minion Pro is a Serif typeface, released in 2000 based on the font Minion MM. It was inspired by classical, old style typefaces of the late Renaissance.

Arial Black

Arial Black is a Sans Serif typeface designed in 1982 by Robin Nicolas and Patricia Saunders. Because it is easy to read at large and small sizes and in a variety of applications, Arial Black has been a staple screen font for decades.

R

R

Britannic Bold

Britannic is a sans serif typeface, designed in 1992, with a vertical axis and a high degree of stroke contrast, especially in the heavier weights

Letter Gothic Std A monospaced sans serif font designed for use on an IBM Selectric typewriter, Letter Gothic was designed by Roger Roberson for IBM sometime between 1956 and 1962.

Inspired by Optima, the typeface originally had flared stems.

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Recycling: Digital development

These prototypes were done in Adobe Illustrator, just to give us a rough idea of what the use of different materials would end up looking like. At a group crit we showed our peers and the majority of them agreed that the corrugated card design best showed our word of Recyle.

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Making our Letter:

2. We drew squares on the corrugated card measuring up to be 260mm x 260mm (making sure there was enough space to cut the R out of it).

1. We started of with around 2 or 3 cardboard boxes, making sure that they were not damaged, have any fold marks or tape on them

3. The aim was for the width of our letter to be approximately 50mm and so after cutting out the squares we worked out that we would need 12 cardboard sheets.

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4. In InDesign, we set up the document for it to be cut using the laser cutter.The page was set to 260mm x 260mm and using Arial Black for the R we resized in to 235mm x 240mm. For the laser cutter to perform the right type of cut the line of the letter had to be a red stroke .

5. We put the sheets of cardboard in the laser cutter 4 sheets at a time and the laser cutter did the rest of the work. Once they were all cut out, using PVA glue we stuck the the individual R’s together, placed them inbetween two books and left it to dry over night.

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Postcard 15

Task...

Using our distinctive letter produced in the previous task, we have to produce an A6 postcard with the image on one side and a brief description of our word on the other.

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Description Examples:

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Recycling is the conversion of waste into reusable materials. In relation to typography, there are may different fonts all having different x-heights, widths etc and so when printing documents your choice of font is critical. The lower the width and x-height, the more you can fit on one page, which means less paper being used. Leading to the reduction of consumption of materials, selection of low cost environmentally friendly materials, design for environmental performance, design for recycling, and more.

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The act of creating new products through processing used or abandonded materials.

For example, recycling newspaper and other paper wastes cannot be used to make high grade paper as it shortens the fibres. However, it can be reprocessed to make cardboard.

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Layout Designs:

This postcard with be engraved and cut of of fibre board, using the laser cutter. On the reverse side there will be a few line for the sending address. The R will be cut out and the description engraved. The image of our letter from the previous task wouldn’t be included, but the Cut out R will be in the same style and size as it.

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The idea behind this design is very similar to the previous one, the only difference is that the letter R will be engraved instead of completely cut out. Also the postcard is portrait on the front, but wil still be landscape in the back. Because the R isn’t being cut out there is more space on the back of the postcard to either add more lines for text or have another sentence.

Recycling The act of creating new products through processing used or abandonded materials. For example, recycling newspaper and other paper wastes cannot be used to make high grade paper as it shortens the fibres. However, it can be reprocessed to make cardboard.

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Making the Postcard: This is what the InDesign file will look like for it to be laser cut on the fibre board.

The R is a red stroke as that will be cut out completely, the line in the middle and the description text is plain black fill as that will ensure that it is only engraved and not cut.

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Back of Postcard...

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Vernacular Letterforms 24

Task...

Beginning with a visit to Poole, in groups of 4 we had to identify, collect and photograph examples of vernacular letterforms in the town.

Once the images were taken they will be published in the form of a book.

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Visit to Poole During our visit to Poole we were walking around town to find as many letterforms as we possibly could, making sure that we had multiple photographs of each letter in the alphabet.We looked at road signs, makings on the floor, spaces inbetween buildings and sky scrapers. As well as this, we had the oppotunity to visit Poole Museum, and in there we were able to take photographs on the exhibits, but also learn a bit about the history of Poole.

Worked with: Georgia Shorey, Christiana Wilson, Maya Forcione 26

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Editing Images: Original image

Original image

After choosing the photographs we wanted to be included in our book, they needed to be edited. All images had to be in RGB colour and saved as a TIFF file. When it came to editing the pictures we kept it simple, brightening the images, cropping them if need be and also changing the saturation and contrast.

Edited image

Edited image

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Book Layout:

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As our book is going to be in the form of a French Fold, we had to work backwards when laying out the pages in InDesign (the left page on InDesign would be the right page in the actual book). We chose an image for our first page and had to include a title and our names, introducing the book and giving an

initial idea of what the book will entail. We wanted our book to have depth to it and so took a lot of time into the arrangment of the photographs and looked into the sizing and shape of the images and what would look good next to each other.

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Making the Book: Perfect Book Binding

We used the Perfect Binding method to bind our book.This started off with folding the each of the pages on a lightbox using a bone to ensure the french fold pages had a sharp fold. Putting the book pages into a vice, we stippled glue onto the ends of the pages where the spine will be, making sure the glue was evenly distributed. This step was repeated 4 times and then left over night to dry completely.

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Once the body of the book was dry, we were able to put the cover on the book. To do this the body of the book had to be measured, leaving enough space for the front, back and spine of the book.

Then creating perfect folds in the cover using a fold machine. Using the same glue used for the body of the book, we applied glue to the spine of the book and cover and then left it in a clamp for another 4-6 hours to make sure it dried completely and in place.

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Finished Book:

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Workshops 36

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Digital Letterpress This was an introduction into LetterMPress, giving us the experience of producing our own designs on a letterpress, placing and arranging type on a press bed, inking, and then turning the hand crank to make a print. All of the steps in the printing process was replicated digitally giving us an authentic and interactive experience. I was playing around with the letters of my name and also layering different textured prints on top of eachother to see the outcome.

I really enjoyed this workshop as I have never done Letter pressing before and so it was a nice insight to how type used to be printed.

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Japanese

Bookbinding: Japanese Bookbinding enables you to bind together single sheets of paper, with different colors, textures, materials and thicknesses.

It is most commonly done with 4 holes but we used 5.

First starting with our paper choice, the paper I used for my book was a medium thickness. For the cover of our book we had two sheets of card, which were cut to

the same size of the paper.

Using the fold machine, fold marks were place 11cm from the spine of the book which is where the hole would be for the binding process. With the aid of a drill, the 5 holes were drilled into the paper and cover sheets, using a template. Once this was done we were able to start the binding. We used binding thread to put together this

book, which is stronger than ordinary thread. Before theading it through the holes, we ran the thread through wax a few times to ensure the thread wouldn’t snap during the process. You start and end the threading process in the middle hole and once finished you tie the two ends of thread and cut off the excess.

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Exhibition

‘For The Love of Graphics’

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‘For The Love of Graphics’ was a way for us to show and present what we appreciate about graphic design.

Everyone had to bring in something that they could exhibit and as shown in the pictures, we had a great set up. I chose to exhibit a range of books that I have always looked to for inspiration, when I’m struggled to get ideas and generally just enjoy looking through. It was a great way of seeing the kinds of things people collect and treasure.

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Lectures 46

Lecture 1:

Lecture 2:

Lecture 3:

Notions of Taste, Aesthetic Judgement and Consumer Culture

Propaganda

Identity and Postmodernism

• Word association; bias point of view;tool box for politicians.

• Propaganda: Power and Persuasion (David Welch) • Information to damage or assist the cause of the government or movement.

• The spreading of ideas, information or rumors for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, cause or person.

• Comes from a religious background.

• Manufacturing Consent (Noam Chomsky) • Propagate: spead information and ideas, reproduce the true • Black Propaganda: from a source that can not be identified.

• White propaganda: evidence, can verify the source.

• Grey Propaganda: the source is questionable • The 4 Varieties

• Class: traditional (socialogical) ways of looking at identity revolved around class, race and gender.

• How do we define what class we’re in?

• Sex and Gender: traditional notions of gender assign certain roles e.g. the bread winner and the housewife.

• Expectations regarding who we can become because of our sex.

• Race: Marking difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is established.

• Although there is a law against descrimination.

• A form of ‘othering’.

• Occupation: we are judged by our occupation.

• Identified by our occupation (talk shows, crime news etc.)

• Gives us a sense of purpose.

• Culture: the activities you engage in can define your class • Opera vs. Giggs

• Our relationship with objects and how we respond to them and give value to ‘things’.

• Why do we choose to purchase things? Stigma?

Price? Availability?

• Ergonomics/ functions and form: what we should really be looking for.

• Changing attitudes changes the value of life (Silver Fox Stole) • We need to be satisfied by objects.

• The power of Capitalism: enlargment as mass deception!

• Hierarchy: puts us in our place (class wise). Can we change what class we are in/from?

• Comes down to identity, personal taste and opinion.

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Critical Evaluation of Unit 2: Visual Thinking All in all I feel that this unit has enabled me to develop my designing and technical abilities. Being put into a scenario where I have to produce a book in a group was a good experience for me. I had to, with much struggle, listen to other people’s opinions and realise that my way may not necessarily be the right way. I found that I was able to put to use the skills I gained in the first unit, and as well as this, the fact that this unit was predominantely done in groups so if I didn’t have the skills required, there were other people to turn to for help and visa versa. I wasn’t very organised when it came to taking pictures and documenting what I was doing through out the unit, which is a shame as this meant I didn’t have as many photographs to include in my book as I would have hoped.

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