Placard Phrase
Inspiration These two images play a lot with detail within the form. In the top image, the decorative type becomes a background image, so the main font is still legible. However, on the bottom image, it hurt my eyes to read. Yet, the text is still beautiful. It plays off the ideas of beauty and legibility.
Marian Bantjes was the designer who said the phrase I chose, which was, “But I find that for myself, without exception, the more I deal with the work as something that is my own, as something that is personal, the more successful it is.� I thought this was a rather intriguing quote, and as I researched Bantjes, I realized that perhaps her quote spoke more of her narcissism and conceit than her introspection. But hey, she’s still a pretty great designer, so I enjoyed looking at her work.
Originally, this was more of the route I thought my phrase would go. I enjoyed the architectural construction of her type in this image. The text order is hard to decipher, but not impossible. It requires a closer look, and a bit of piecing together like a puzzle.
Inspiration
I loved this image, because of the colors and the very fluid, organic shapes. The swirls that are characteristic of Bantjes’ work are represented in this image.
Inspiration Her sass factor was intense. Part of me admired her confidence, and part of me was repulsed by her conceit. It’s not flattering to be that prideful in my opinion... Also, perhaps she only makes swirls to get sales, but they’re still kind of pretty. Since this was a main theme throughout her work, I decided to base my designs off of the swirls.
So many swirls. Interestingly enough, Bantjes made a comment on one of her works that was very cynical, basically just saying that this was what was going to make her money. She was also very sassy in her Q&A section, calling some questions stupid and refusing to answer.
Inspiration
Here are several more ornate, swirly designs. These all influenced the typography in my depiction of her phrase.
Sketches
My process began with a LOT of hand sketches. Originally, I had way too many fonts going on, a lot of which I planned on hand-lettering. It was over the top -- but then again, so is Bantjes’ work.
Sketches ....more sketches....
Here, I started getting closer to what would be my final design. Since my quote was so long, it made it a lot easier to emphasize one word, and fit the other words around it. Since Bantjes’ has a bit of an ego issue, in my opinion, I emphasized the word “successful” and added secondary emphasis on words such as “I” ,“my own” and “personal”.
Back to the Drawing Board
One of the things that really helped the progression of my ideas was going to a white board and drawing the phrase out there. Not only did this help with scale (since my canvas was the largest in the class, at 12� x 24�), it also helped with the fluidity of my design. I could change certain words or pieces of the phrase, while keeping what I liked intact. The basic format of my design became more cemented, and I felt much more confident about where my design was going. Even though I was making a lot of renditions of the same phrase, each one began to build on the last, so it felt like I was moving closer to my finished product, rather than starting over (which I originally was afraid would happen with 20-30 sketches!).
Back to the Drawing Board
Digital Sketches
Off to the computer! I found swirly fonts online... but there still weren’t enough swirls! I had played around with the idea of hand-lettering, and during the first critique, others agreed that this would be a good idea. Another positive was the curl of the “S” wrapping around certain sections of the phrase (especially the middle sketch on opposite page).
Digital Sketches
Hand-lettering
For my venture into hand-letting, I focused on big swirls and cursive looking font. I played around with the shape of the “S� quite a bit, so that this could fit type inside the bowl.
Critique During this critique, it came to my attention that my spelling of successful, wasn’t, ahem, so successful. Also, the idea was presented that “Successful” could extend off the page. I played with this idea for the next critique. In addition, after critique, I realized I had inadvertently paraphrased a bit of Bantjes’ quote, so I corrected the wording to be exact.
Hand-lettering: Take 2
I also corrected my spelling, which was a rather important element. With these changes, I became much more happy with my hand-lettering. I placed my font into Illustrator and live traced the image to create a vector image. Then, I replaced the old hand-lettering with my new hand-lettering in my InDesign file.
Hand-lettering: Take 2
Since th type was still kind of scrunched within the bowl of the “S�, I worked on making this larger. In addition, I made my swirls a little more precise.
Final Phrase and Painting
for myself, without exception, But I find that
I
the more
deal with the work
as something that is
my own,
the more it is.
as something that is
personal,
-MARIAN BANTJES
The canvas is painted, and my final phrase is completed as well! Now all that’s left is waiting for the vinyl to come back from the printer’s.
Project complete! At last, the vinyl arrived! It was very exciting to put on the vinyl, and now the canvases are proudly displayed on the wall in the lab. I’m glad I really utilized the principle of scale, because without these changes in size throughout the composition, the quote would have required much more effort than ease to read.
Finished Product
Reflection
I really enjoyed this project for several reasons. First of all, I made a lot of sketches, which was new to me, since usually I consider 3 or 4 good enough. However, if I hadn’t gone through that process, I don’t think my design would have been as well thought out. Secondly, I had never hand lettered a type design before, so I had a lot of fun playing around with that! I also really liked learning about a designer, and taking inspiration from both their words and their designs. One of the things that frustrated me about this project was that I chose a really long quote. However, this was a double edged sword, because it was also enjoyable to have a lot of words to play with. Plus, I think both the quote and the designer are rather fascinating. Through this project I learned more about type, designers, and how to make an interesting design that is still easily readable.