Expressive
TYPE
Kelsey Beyer
I chose to create expressive type pieces of the words “circulate,” “roll,” and “invisible.” My initial plans for the words were very different from what I ended up creating. For “circulate,” I imagined words with very circular, flowing motions, such as arrows for C’s or pipe-like structures forming the letters, as liquid circulates through pipes. After a few Google Image searches of “circulate” and other words in that family, I came across some pictures of the human circulatory system. This is where I came up with the idea to incorporate veins into my piece. I like this option because I feel it’s much less conventional, yet it still clearly expresses the original word. When I chose the term “roll,” I was envisioning some letters tumbling down a hill. I also couldn’t get delicious dinner rolls off my mind... Then, after I looked at images online, I was inspired by some photos of wheels. I tried to create the front end of a car, but my sketch turned into more of the front end of a semi, so I rolled with it. Pun intended. Finally, I had a whole host of ideas for the word “invisible.” Some sketches had the letters gradually disappearing, others had missing letters or sections of letters, and one even included some watchful eyes. But my favorite idea, which I developed after the others, was to turn the ‘i’ into a magnifying glass and examine tiny (almost invisible) letters with it.
CIRCULATE
This word proved to be the biggest challenge for me. I was excited about the idea of my design, but I found that the implementation was nearly impossible. I wanted the clump of letters in the center to look like a human heart, which turned out to be a difficult task in only black and white. Furthermore, distorting the letters and arranging them that closely made them very difficult to read. Even in the sketches before they were extremely distorted, classmates agreed they could I chose Bauhaus because of its roundness and barely make out the word. thickness. I loved the way the letters looked like they could be filled with water (I would For this reason, I altered my design and say blood in veins, but that’s a little morbid), combined the fluidity feel with the circulatory so they were just what I was looking for. The system by connecting the ‘c’ and ‘e’ with a thickness also worked very well for the design, string of flowing letters (‘irculat’), and keeping as the letters seem more closely arranged the veins at the bottom connection of the ‘c’ rather than a light font that would be very and ‘e’. spread apart.
ROLL
I really enjoyed my ideas for “roll� that involved a dinner roll, but the class liked my semi truck better. I thought the idea of the semi itself was more creative, but I loved the manipulation of the letters in my sketch with the gravy bowl and salt and pepper shakers. However, I felt the semi was a better representation of using the letters more true to their original forms. My first sketch included just the cab of the semi, but in my later sketches, I decided to add the truck part as well. This was more strongly favored by my peers, so I chose this as my final design. Fortunately, I did not have to change anything going from paper to computer, other than adding a second tire on the back of the cab for realistic purposes.
INVISIBLE
When I created my initial sketch of “invisible” with the magnifying glass (marked with two stars), I knew it was the design I wanted to move forward with. While I enjoyed some of my other sketches, such as the stems of ‘i’s being removed, I felt that the magnifying glass was really taking advantage of the shape of the ‘i’ and was more creative than simply removing pieces of the word. This design, like “roll,” proved to be a fun one to create on the computer. It didn’t give me many issues, and working with digital fonts rather than handwriting was great; I could make it much smaller in proportion to the magnifying glass and the ‘n’ but still have it be totally readable.