Project 1 Six-Word Stories

The first 6 word story was “Born in the desert, still thirsty.” When thinking of words and images that stood out to me from this story, of course one of the first things that came to mind was a cactus. I really wanted the typography to stand out rather than the picture, so I picked a simple photo of cacti with one main focal point and a large section of clear blue sky. The photo was a little bit grainy which I liked because it reminded me of the desert in a way, dry and sandy. I wanted the words to look like they each fit into each other like a puzzle piece. I messed around a lot with different fonts and sizes until I found a way that works. To get the “still” to fit perfectly in line with the italicized “T” of “desert”, I changed the kerning of the letters to slightly space them out more, and then made them gradually get bigger. I adjusted the kerning to an amount that would place the dot of the “I” at the place where the comma should be. I then shaped the dot to look like a comma so that it could act as both.

The second 6 word story was “one bowl of spaghetti two forks?”. The way this was phrased leaves a lot of ambiguity and mystery to it. So I picked a darker image of spaghetti, with a black background. I saw the story as a dinner date invitation, romantically sharing a bowl of pasta. And the hand lifting the forkful of pasta in the image seems as if it is reaching out like an invitation or gesture which I thought was fitting. With the romantic, and mysterious feelings that the image and story give off, I wanted to incorporate a cursive font choice. I made all of the text a soft brown color, a swatch from of a part of the image, to carry out the same tone. Again with this story, like the last, I tried to place the words individually, but place them to in the right ways so they seemed connected and seamless.