the second STEP By Muting Wang
The Second Step, Muting Wang Visual Communication Design, Department of Art& Design School of Visual & Performing Arts, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
A publication of the School of Visual & Performing Arts All content is copyright in the name of the designer, November, 2013
Intro
This book will walk you through the process of designing with two letters—combines the letters together and simplifies them. You will find the final solution for the design in the end of this book. The whole process can be divided into two main step. The first step is being given the letters; the second step, which is the most important, is testing the possibility of metamorphose and designing. During the second step, I have to first of all, examine all the possibilities that w and p could metamorphose. I test the upper and lower cases of the letters in ten different typefaces, such as Helvetica, Garamond, and Univers, to find out the characteristics in each typeface. Then I create various designs of combining w and p together harmoniously. There’s one thing that I always keep in mind while doing the second step is to keep the two letters legible, and neither of them is dominated. Now let’s begin!
Content
Introduction
02
Part 1/Hand Sketches
07
Part 2/Computer Works
23
Part 3/Enhancing
47
Part 4/Final Design
57
Part 1
The hand sketching process is the first process I have approached in the second step design; and it is the most exciting one. I didn’t do much brainstorming before I started sketching, not like what we usually do when we receive the project. What I need to do is to draw whatever in my mind on the paper. I had a great experience by using three different media--pencil, ball point pen, and mark pen. At the beginning of my sketching process, I rotated, reflected, and even twisted the letters w and p a lot; and the letters were not constrainted in same size or typeface.
Most of the early sketches were made up with thinner line quality and contrasted size, because I wanted to find all possibilities of letters’ placement. In my later sketches, I played more with the white and black spaces, and tried to keep the two letters in the same size. That helped me discover more characteristics of the letters.
6
Hand Sketches
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Part 2
After doing dozens of hand skeches, I started to rethink how to combine the two letter together harmoniously. To me, the most important thing in the second step is to keep both the two letter legible and keep them in the same visual weight all the time. That gave me a great challenge! The computer offered me quicker and more accurate way to design with the two letters. So in this process, I had to be more careful. However, since the letters w and p both don’t metamorphosis much from capital case to lower case, and can’t be easily rotated or reflected
(otherwise they will become other letters), I had to use the ten provided typefaces and black and white spaces to create the variation. The designs which seem least successful and have more problems, were appealing to me during this process. I think they taught me much more than those successful pieces. While refining them again and agian, I felt I had become more intereted in typographic design.
22
Computer Works
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
40
41
Part 3
After doing dozens of hand skeches, I started to rethink how to combine the two letter together harmoniously. To me, the most important thing in the second step is to keep both the two letter legible and keep them in the same visual weight all the time. That gave me a great challenge! The computer offered me quicker and more accurate way to design with the two letters. So in this process, I had to be more careful. However, since the letters w and p both don’t metamorphosis much from capital case to lower case, and can’t be easily rotated or reflected (otherwise they will become other letters), I had to use the ten provided typefaces and black and white spaces to create the variation. The designs which seem least successful and have more problems, were appealing to me during this process. I think they taught me much more than those successful pieces. While refining them again and agian, I felt I had be-
46
Enchancing
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
Final
be easily rotated or reflected (otherwise they will become other letters), I had to use the ten provided typefaces and black and white spaces to create the variation. The designs which seem least successful and have more problems, were appealing to me during this process. I think they taught me much more than those successful pieces. While refining them again and agian, I felt I had become more intereted in typographic design.
After doing dozens of hand skeches, I started to rethink how to combine the two letter together harmoniously. To me, the most important thing in the second step is to keep both the two letter legible and keep them in the same visual weight all the time. That gave me a great challenge! The computer offered me quicker and more accurate way to design with the two letters. So in this process, I had to be more careful. However, since the letters w and p both don’t metamorphosis much from capital case to lower case, and can’t
56
57
This book is dedicated with love and affection to my mother and to all women designers.
Acknowedgements Kathy Rainey Sherry Swank Cathy Aper Dennis Ichiyama
BoilerCopyMakerPurdue University Purdue Printing Service, Purdue University
Purdue Priting Service & BoilerCopyMaker Professor of VCD, Purdue University
Scot Benham Haywood Printing Co.Inc.Lafayette, Indiana Babara Mayfield Continueing LecturerPurdue University
coloPHON Paper: Cougar 80# cover and 70# text Type: Type face(s) and point size(s) Binding: Perfect bound Printing: Purdue Printing Services &BoilerCopyMaker Bindery: Haywood Printing Co.Inc. Lafayette, Indiana Printer: Xerox DocuColor 252 Edition: 6 copies