process book
Katie Bumatay
Contents Research 5 Discovery 11 Refinement 25 Criticism 34
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Research: What to Include I began by reviewing the in-class presentation of type posters on my own, and looked closely at what I liked or didn’t like about each one. After sifting through those for inspiration, I looked online at typographic posters and saved some for reference as well. I was drawn to posters that carefully considered the small subtext type rather than taking the easy route of putting it in the top/bottom/corners. I also liked those which considered the type as shapes or used it to create shape; these ones generally played off the negative spaces created by letters, words, or blocks of text, and made different elements on the poster fit together like pieces of a puzzle. I thought the posters that used type to create texture allowed the poster to be visually appealing both at a distance and up close. Finally, I noticed that essentially none of the posters that I saw placed elements centrally, which I thought was a good compositional decision.
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Research: What Not to Include When browsing through both the class presentation and online material, I also made note of things that I didn’t find appealing so that I could be sure to avoid them in my own designs. These strategies weren’t necessarily bad, but to me they either seemed forced, seemed like the obvious solution, or I thought I could push myself to go beyond them. I didn’t mind words that were rotated to take on a vertical shape, but I didn’t like when words were spelled vertically with stacked letters. Some posters formatted text size and weight so that each line was the same length, but I thought that it caused unintentional emphasis on certain lines (because size and weight was based on fit not hierarchy). While I was more fond of designs that illustrated a concept referenced by the text, I wasn’t particularly drawn to designs that illustrated an object.
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Discovery: Thumbnails I generated thumbnail designs for each poster to get started, attempting to develop a broad range of ideas and give myself lots of options to work with. As stated, I found through my research that I liked when the subtext was carefully considered and when shapes interacted with one another. Thus, I decided to first establish the hierarchy and shape of the most important element, tweet itself, then figure out how the other information could interact with it after. Had I determined that the either the person, number of likes and retweets, time, date, or bio were more important than the tweet itself, I would have began the design process with that element. The following pages contain a selection of a few sample pages of thumbnails that I generated.
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Poster 1
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Poster 2
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Poster 3
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Discovery: Digitalization I chose some of the designs from my thumbnails that I thought would work the best, and developed initial versions of them. This process allowed me to reconcile my thumbnail ideas with both the limitations and possibilities of digital type, because I could see concretely the amount of space that each word and line occupied. For some, the type did not act or fit as I originally intended, and for others, I discovered new possibilities that the digital type could do. I chose the font family Vista Sans, because I thought the sans serif was the simplest and easiest to read and take in at a glance, and thus considered it the most fitting for the function of a poster. Since I could better see how the type would actually look and act when working digitally, and could make quick shifts in placement and size, I continued to work digitally to make many different iterations of the ideas I started developing.
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One concept I had for this poster was to isolate single words, especially the word “him”, from the rest of the text. Another concept was a metaphorical illustration of the text falling apart, just as the author predicts the country will fall apart under the leadership of “him”.
Poster 1: Initial Concepts
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Poster 2: Initial Concepts
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For the second poster, I wanted to emphasize the contrast between Obama being called the greatest president, and slave owners being called the greatest. I also thought of reversing/flipping/mirroring the slave owners part to show that it is a messed-up way of thinking. I also wanted to demonstrate a rift between the two ideologies.
With the additional freedom of using both size and weight to achieve hierarchy, I started by using these options simply to place emphasis on certain words. I then began thinking about the weights as texture and made iterations where the type became an illustrative texture of falling asleep.
Poster 3: Initial Concepts
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Discovery: Adding Subtext After I decided on a few concepts for each poster, I began thinking about how to add the additional information, and explored different ways that it could interact with the main tweet. I considered the negative space that the design of the tweet created, and wanted to find ways to activate it with this subtext. The depth of my exploration for each poster design was directly related to how successful I thought my initial digital designs were. I considered a design successful if the order of the words of the tweet were clear, if the concept and hierarchy clearly emphasized the tweet’s message, and if all elements on the page were carefully considered. If I thought my designs were unsuccessful, I continued making very different compositions. If I thought they were successful, I made more iterations of the same designs.
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For the subtext, I continued the tool of putting one word on each line, forming a gray texture from which I could isolate “him”. When viewed from a distance, it appears as only two distinct elements, which supports the message.
For the second concept, I tried placing the subtext in spots that I thought would activate the negative space, but it was hard to not take away from the importance of the tweet visually. I also tried mimicking the “falling apart”.
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The discovery process for this second poster consisted less of multiple iterations of a similar concept, and more of a broad range of concepts to choose from.
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I explored the ways that the subtext could play off or correlate with the shapes already created by the text of the tweet itself. I tried alignment with another shape, continuing implied lines, and emphasizing the division.
In addition, I tried creating a new shape that could mimic the shape of the tweet or the negative space. I was most successful when the subtext felt like a continuation of the main shape, rather than an unrelated shape.
Again I explored options of making shapes with the subtext that fit into or next to the shape of the tweet, drawing from inspiration from my research where text and subtext fit together like a puzzle. I was most successful when I broke the subtext into individual lines and treated them one at a time to create the shape, instead of leaving it as one text box.
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Refinement My refinement process varied poster to poster. For the first and third posters, I had settled on one idea, so the refinement process was simply an exploration of different placements and scales of the elements. However, the refinement process for my second poster was much more intensive, and required me to refine many different versions of the poster. I started rearranging the placement and changing scale for just a few designs, but I was often unsatisfied and tried to solve the problem by developing and refining a whole new design idea. As I refined each of my designs, I thought back to my definition of success in this project. Is the order of words in the tweet clear? Will the viewer know where to look first, second third, etc.? Is the hierarchy clear? Am I using shape and space to support the message? If the answer to any of those questions wasn’t “yes,� I made another iteration of it, attempting to fix the unfulfilled question.
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To refine this concept, I did experiments to figure out the best placement of the column and single word and the best space between them.
This helped determine which relationship best suited the tweet’s message and my concept of isolation and separation of one from the whole.
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I created the most iterations and versions of the second poster. I had a hard time feeling like the legibility of the tweet was successful when it was upside down -- but I had a hard time letting go of that idea because I liked the concept of showing the “upside down thinking� .So, for a long time, I kept trying to force the concept, to no avail. When I finally divorced that idea, the legibility increased without sacrificing aesthetics. For this refinement stage, one idea led to the next until I had an overwhelming amount of designs to choose from.
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For this refinement I was smoothing out the curve of the tweet’s shape and of the subtext’s shape, and refining the ease with which they fit together.
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First Final Submission
I thought that this version, with “him” placed centrally was the most successful in both conveying a sense of isolation and drawing immediate attention to “him”. When “him” was placed to either side, i thought the contrast of attention diminished.
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I chose this design because I thought it illustrated the rift clearly without being too overt about the separation (such as when the subtext acted as a line divider). However, I was not fully satisfied with it, and thought the subtext block competed too much with the beginning of the tweet.
I liked the soothing quality of the gradation of this design, and the interaction between the two shapes that I made. I chose to italicize and slightly rotate it, because when the viewer looks at a single line, it feels heroic, like the fathers.
None of my final refinements ended up being my (absolute) final piece, meaning I tried new things, but they didn’t work as well as something I had tried in the middle of the process.
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Criticism I received feedback that my consideration of the subtext was noticeably intentional, which I was happy with because that was one of my main goals, set after my research. This was voiced particularly in reference to the first and third posters. I agreed that the consideration of the subtext was stronger on those two posters than the first final version of the second; the subtext of the second cause hierarchy confusion. I received very little feedback on the first poster because it was well received at the first round. Thus, I decided to refine and experiment mainly with that one idea. In hindsight, I probably should have continued developing more ideas, in case I came across something better. The criticism of my second poster confirmed my suspicion that the upside down text was too hard to read, which made it harder to know what to read next. I agreed but still held on to the idea for a while because I liked the underlying concept, but after hearing this feedback multiple times I finally gave it up.
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The criticism of my second poster confirmed my suspicion that the upside down text was too hard to read, which made it harder to know what to read next. I agreed but still held on to the idea for a while because I liked the underlying concept, but after hearing this feedback multiple times I finally gave it up. In the middle of the process, during the critique of the third posters, my peers voiced their opinions that the versions of the enlarged “s/o� were weaker because they didn’t fit with the concept of putting a baby to sleep. Since I was aiming for this concept, I agreed and decided to continue with the gradation option. Overall, of the versions I initially turned as my final product, the first and third were well received, and the second seemed neutral. I decided to revise the second to decrease the ambiguity of the hierarchy.
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I was satisfied with the version of the first poster that I had as my original final, so I didn’t change it when I turned it in officially.
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I changed the design of the second poster after the group critique. Now the viewer is drawn to the largest text, which leads them to start reading at the beginning of that block. The eyes are led down to the bottom left, where the sentence finishes. The subtext doesn’t interfere with the tweet. 37
Out of personal preference, I decided to changed the font back out of italics, because I thought the concept that I was trying to portray with the italics wasn’t clear enough to justify it.
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