N Q X AC E G H K O ST V J W Y U B M L R F I D P
CHRISTIE WILSON TYPOGRAPHY
My chosen subject to orientate my typography and experiments around is my mum, I have chosen her because I feel it would be interesting to look at another person and analyse what they love and then expand upon them in a creative way, I have brainstormed some basic ideas of what my mum enjoys as a quick starting point to kick start some experimentation, hopefully both digitally and manually. I have included some images on a few subjects my mum enjoys, that I may centre my typefaces around. BAKING
FLOWERS
RESEARCH
For research puropses I decided to look at a few different typography styles, I found that I was mainly drawn to the more fun and playful typography. I feel I preferred these because of the different shapes used and created, rather than just sticking to a usual typeface. I found both colour and black and white used in the typeface to be effective, and it naturally depended on what the subject matter of the type was on whether colour was used or not. I will take this into consideration when experimenting with my own font. The most inspirational I found was an illustrator and typographer Pomme Chan, her work was very varied and intricate and you could see the clear influence from her illustration work, making the typography very artistic and subject based, so I was drawn to this aspect, and I feel that I may want to replicate or draw aspects from her work in my own experimentation. I also feel inspired by M/M Paris their online catologue was full of a lot of typography that was very image based, they seemed to manipulate existing images through different means to get their final outcome, many of them had a handrawn element to them, adding to the rough feeling and individulaity of each letter or punctuation marks. Again I feel that I want to take elements of their work into my own.
C Q N Z E X H T G A K V O J S B
Helvetica Film; I watched this film a few times as I found it really interesting and I felt it widened my knowledge on text as a whole and also presented to me some really interesting typographers. I learnt what ascenders, descenders and x-heights meant as well as how different people have different feelings towards a certain font or typeface which leads them to work with them or create a new one in a range of different ways. I found it interesting to see many creatives opinion on the font helvetica and how it evolved and how some typographers feel it still can be evolved and some believe that it is perfect as it is. It is a font that in this day and age we take as a given. I chose to use the font helvetica all throughout this document as I believe it played a large part in shaping this project, solely by watching the film.
N Q XZ AC E G H K O ST V J W Y B U M L R F D I P
EXPERIMENTATION
EDIBLE MATERIALS
Working with edible materials was a challenge and also fun, I took the idea of my mums love of baking literally and experimented to see what I could do with food. I made letters initially out of cake that I baked a food coloured pink to make the letters stand out more, I cut each letter out individually, I chose to do some letters that were similar to eachother, like one of the typographers did in ‘Helvetica’. I then used pastry to cut the letters out individually. I then decided to further this by putting the letters that I baked inside another cake and baking those, this turned out really well and the effect was when you cut the cake in half you could see the letters inside, I was really pleased with this outcome and feel that my letters came out well, althought this would be too much work to make all the characters necessary for a font.
HAND DRAWN
After experimentating with physical materials and creating type by hand I decided to try out using photoshop and indesign, I started out by using the programmes seperately then realised I could achieve the look I want with more easy if I combined using tools from each programme, the font above was created using both. I used an image that I had taken of flowers for the lettering. Because the main focus of the typeface was flowers I did not want the edges to be straight and harsh as this detracts from the feminity of the letters so I made the edges slightly wavy and un even. I like the effect this created so I think I am going to go on with technique and take it into my final outcome, but I may bring a hand drawn element back into it so that it reflects the research I have looked at, especially Pomme Chan’s work.
INDESIGN & PHOTOSHOP
C Q N Z E X H T G A K V O B D F IJ L M RSU W Y P
PRESENTING FINAL FONT As my final font was based on flowers, I decided to present them as a bunch of flowers to my mum, so here is my final outcome:
FINAL FONT
C N Q E H T A G K O J B D F I L M SU PR
WORKSHOP
C Q N Z E X H T G A K V O J S B D F I LM R UW Y P
The two day Live Poster workshop that I attended was an excellent opportunity for experimentating and doing something out of my comfort zone. I thoroughly enjoyed recreating a horror movie poster. It was refreshing to work in a group and manage to get something completed in so little time. I also was given the opportunity to work on the font within the poster, so this gave me a chance to experiment a little with freehand font drawing as this is not my strongest point.
LIVE POSTER WORKSHOP
N Q Z AC E G H J K O T VX S B W Y U M L F D I R P TYPOGRAPHY WORKSHOP
The first workshop I undertook was a simple typography one, where I had the chance to experiment with creating letters but with the meaning of the word influencing the outcome and also learning more about working to a type grid. I also got to learn more about the individual types of font e.g. Serif, San Serif etc. I feel this aided starting my project, so that I was not completely at a loss as to where to start.