The Brief
The Audience
Create an alphabet using typography found around Leeds City centre and the surrounding areas.
Residence or visitors to Leeds who are inspired by either photography or typography.
You can use a combination of photography and typography to create this alphabet.
No specific age range.
A large portion of this brief will consist of documenting interesting and unique typefaces. Try not to just go around photographing common shop signage with common digital typefaces. Be experimental with your approach and see if you can open your mind to typography in an everyday environment that perhaps you take for granted when roaming the streets of Leeds. This alphabet should show people the beauty of all forms of typography and perhaps open their minds to the design around them on their day out in Leeds. There are no limitations on the format or how you present your alphabet but some form of publication is recommended as this will allow easy viewing for the interested parties.
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Concept
The Plan
Documentation
- Initially start travelling around Leeds, sourcing and documenting as many interesting typefaces as possible.
The method of approach towards this brief is already set out, however the visual examples that you can see in the top right of this page is the style of photo documentation that I wanted to follow.
- ensure that I travel around Leeds centre, Hyde Park and Headingly as these are the most occupied areas of Leeds.
Photographing, typography that usually people ignore like abandoned or old shop signage, graffiti, house numbers etc, will help create a completely unique alphabet.
- Extract and vectorize individual typefaces until I have a complete alphabet including numerals
By changing the angle of the shot and the direction you are looking at the letter form will also morph a typeface even further, so by incorporating the morphed type in different scenarios should help create some interesting outcomes.
Format and Presentation I intend to produce a complete publication that follows the alphabet and provides the original image that I have taken for each letter form The result will be an individual letter form that I will extract from the photograph and vectorize accompanied by the original photograph. A simple booklet is my intended format as this would be easy and cheap to print and produce and would be a suitable format to be sold to art, photography or design enthusiasts.
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- Select and edit chosen images
- take final alphabet and images and produce a publication that clearly presents the alphabet and it’s concept in a clear and concise manor.
Photography As you can see I have tried to capture as many different typefaces in as many different locations and environments as possible, to allow a good range, to ensure that each letter of the alphabet looks different and shows off a different part of Leeds.
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The Alphabet The next stage was to extract the individual letter forms from my chosen photographs and ensuring they are all solid black while still maintaining the integrity of the original image and the feel that comes with each letter.
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The Publication I have designed the booklet as a landscape format, I this is quite a nice aesthetic and allows a double page spread to focus on just one letter form. I think once printed out this format would be quite a nice feel to flick through and you get both the individual shape of each letter as well as the contrast of texture and colour that comes with each photograph.
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Final Publication Overall I am really happy with the outcome of both the alphabet and the publication, I think by separating our the individual letter forms and vectorising makes the alphabet seem more real that if it were just photograph based. The colours of the photographs give each page its own unique colour scheme and the descriptions I have incorporated about the location of each typeface in Leeds could be extended and formed into a map. The production of the publication did not go as smooth as planned, I have saddle stitched the booklet but I did not expect it to be so thick so perhaps a different method would have been more appropriate.
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