Restricted Typography

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FIERY SUNSET Alma Woodsey Thomas 1973

Each grid should be 2.5” in width Column height is artibrary No breaks within the columns No angled cuts Work only with construction paper

Due to how restrictive this iteration was, I relied heavily on my own interpretation of the letters and thought about what makes each letter unique.

I love how personal the letters became because of this. They don’t really make sense to anyone else because nobody else has that same thought process I did.

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Allowed to have up to 3 columns Do not need to use all columns Allowed to have breaks No angled cuts Column width is arbitrary

× Column height should be the same as iteration 1 × Work only with construction paper

MAPLE RED Edward Clark 1963

I found that in iteration 1 I really liked my letters that implied the letter, for example my s, I took that concept and ran with it for iteration 2. I used a lot of negative space to imply what each letter was. I also used opposites for trickier or similar letters, like U/V, M/N, S/Z, B/C/D.

Can work in Illustrator Allowed to have angled cuts Do not need to use all columns Allowed to have any amount of columns × Column width is arbitrary × Column height should be the same as first and second iterations × × × ×

AMERICAN GOTHIC Grant Wood 1930

I had a very hard time this iteration, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do with it. I ended up basing it off of a font in the movie Alien but I feel like it has a very crafty feel. I think it looks kind of like cross stitch.

× Work only in Adobe Illustrator × Create your own grid × Use circles to create letter forms and connect circles with pen tool

SUNRISE OVER LAKE ERIE Hughie Lee-Smith 1950

I did a lot of sketches for this iteration, it turned out a bit differently than I envisioned. It’s definitely hard to create a grid based around a vision rather than the other way around. I definitely see myself furthering this concept later on.

× Work only in Adobe Illustrator × Create your own grid × All vertices must touch grid lines

JUDITH BEHEADING HOLOFERNES Artemisia Gentileschi 1620

Right off the bat I knew I wanted to do blackletter for this iteration. I found it was easiest to use a triangular grid to create the look I wanted but having only triangles wasn’t detailed enough so I added in the modular grid. It was definitely hard to follow but I ended up creating 4 shapes that I reused frequently which helped a lot.

× Work only in Adobe Illustrator × Choose either the 4th or 5th iteration × Create the opposite case for this iteration

DIOMEDES DEVOURED

BY HIS HORSES Gustave Moreau B/W 1865–1870

Although I knew it would be difficult, I knew I wanted to create the uppser case for my gothic iteration. It was much harder than the lowercase but once I figured out the handful of shapes to reuse the process sped up.

The process of a design student who doesn’t usually like systematic type projects.