METHODS
METHODS
METHODS S AVA N N A P O L L A R D This is a book detailing my process and methodology during the creation of three projects for the class Experimental Typography taken the Spring of 2016. These pages will take you from the moment I began brainstorming about each assignment, to the final, polished publication. Everyone has a unique path that leads them to the right solution for an assignment, and by showing pages from my journal and photographs of the finished projects, I hope to show my process, my path, my method.
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SEQUENCING ........................7
OBSERVATIONS................19
BROADSHEET......................37 3
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SEQUENCING
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SEQUENCING
Marble your Nails When I first got this assignment, my mind filled with DIYs and recipes: How to make a White Russian, How to Transform a T-shirt, How to make a Snow Globe... and then I finally wrote down How To Marble Your Nails, and I knew it was what I wanted to do. I was already planning the layout and photography of the tiny bottles and bowl all lined up. I decided that Instead of an intro I would have a “Supplies� preliminary page and explain how to make an interesting marbled design on your fingernails in five steps.
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Figuring out how to teach something as complicated as marbling your nails in a bowl of water in only five steps was definitely a challenge. I rewrote the process a few times to make everything concise and easy to follow, without leaving out any important details. I realized I could combine a few steps into one without over complicating anything. The headlines for each step were: 1. Gather your supplies and wash your hands, 2. Tape your fingers, 3. Drip nail polish, 4. Swirl the polish, 5. Clean up edges.
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DESIGN PROCESS
Drawing thumbnails has never been my strong point. Drawing, for me, is something that requires an eraser in one hand and five faint pencil marks on the page beneath each final line. That being said, I knew I would need these drawings for every assignment I was going to take on in this class, and staring with the How To booklet, I knew these quick sketches would be vital to plan out the pages and help figure out all of the steps exactly how I wanted them to be, so that they were easy to follow, could lend themselves to strong and simple icons and I could reproduce the steps in photographs.
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PROCESS
STEP 3
STEP 4
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DESIGN PROCESS
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PROCESS
As for the design of the small booklet, I chose a bold typeface with strongly contrasting thick and thins, Bodoni, to write the steps and cover title. I wanted the colors to portray beauty and fun without being too feminine or cliche, so I settled on a navy duo tone for the photographs and an orangey coral for the secondary color.
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FINISHED PROJECT
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FINISHED PROJECT
The final layout turned out to have a magazine kind of look, which was emphasized by the beauty and fashion subject matter and the treatment of the photography within the page.
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FINISHED PROJECT
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FINISHED PROJECT
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OBSERVATIONS
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OBSERVATIONS Dictionary of Him The requirements for this project were simple: design a book and fill it with curated content from an interview with a classmate, who is not a friend, yet. I was paired with Conor, who had a bright smile and an even brighter, chartreuse hand bag. Although we began as strangers, we were texting eachother and sharing stories by the next week.
Once I was given the assignment sheet, I immediately started jotting down questions and topics to ask Conor about. I asked the normal “favorites” questions, like “what is your favorite cartoon?” “What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?” But I tried to push myself and find questions other people would not have thought of, like, “what do you wish you could do that you admire in others?” And if he had ever been in love. He has been, and is currently, by the way.
02 Design Process
Since there was so much freedom with the format of the book, it was an exciting challenge to figure out a unique, but smart and successful way to showcase the highlights of our conversation while giving the potential reader real insight into Conor’s mind and how our conversation progressed, as two strangers forced to interact at a high level right off the bat. I recorded our interview in class and sifted through his answers and our digressions that lasted almost an hour. I knew I didn’t want this book to be pages and pages of a simple Q & A or a direct copy of the interview. Eventually, I came up with a plan that would take a bit of effort, but that I knew would be worth it to create what I saw in my mind. I would make an alphabetized book full of phrases and words pulled from the recordings and notes in my journal. A Dictionary of Him.
02 Design Process
I took inspiration from large, bold typography in magazines and collected layouts and intriguing graphic uses of numbers and letters to place in my journal.
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02 Design Process
The toughest part of making this dictionary was finding a word for every single letter of the alphabet. Conor and I kept in touch through text and helped each other everytime we needed a bit more information about each other. For the letter G, I shied away from using the obvious word, Gay, to express his sexual orientation, but when I still couldn’t sift out another G word, I asked Conor what he thought and he said to go for it, considering it is such a big part of who he is.
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02 Design Process
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02 Design Process
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1. LETTER
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After I had all the text written and the words defined, I started exploring the layout and dictionary type of format. I wondered if I should have more academic, geometrical sans typography, or play with it more, pushing the limits of expectations for what something with definitions could look like.
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2. WORD 3. PART OF SPEECH 4. DEFINITION
I found a typeface called Bukhari Script that changed the layout and mood of my book instantly. The slick but fat, loopy lettering lent itself wonderfully to my color palette that could only be described as “neon pastel.” The whole book now had somewhat of a 1960’s vibe and I was in love with it.
02 Design Process
“ The whole
book now had somewhat of a 1960’s vibe and I was in love with it. ”
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02 Finished Project
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02 Design Process
Now that the book is fully written designed and printed, the only thing I would change is the cover. Looking back at it now, the photographic cover with geometric sans doesn’t convey the content as accurately as I would have hoped, although I am still thrilled with how it turned out in the end.
Placing the letters and words around the color blocked boxes created interesting shapes and negative spaces.
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02 Finished Project
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02 Finished Project Since the cover was a bit reserved and organized, the inside front cover and first page and inside back cover demanded a bold pattern of the alphabet. I chose a cobalt blue and the same typeface as the words are shown in on the full page spreads.
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02 Finished Project
Large, fun typography and a loud, yet still mellow and relaxing color palette allowed me to turn something as simple and possibly mundane as a dictionary into an intriguing and exciting book to look at and read.
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02 Finished Project
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BROADSHEET
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BROADSHEET Immigration I could tell this assignment was about to push me out of my comfort zone the moment I was handed the assignment sheet. Although an eight page newspaper style publication seemed less daunting than the previous books, there was another aspect that made this one particularly interesting. It had to have a political message, and not just any message we could think of, but it needed to be a commentary on race, immigration or religion. There is enough heat and tension flowing through those three words to roast a beyond satisfying amount of s’mores over.
This assignment was something very new to me. I love publication design but I have only designed books that used a two page spread layout, and never designed a large format publication single page by page.
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03 DESIGN PROCESS
Out of the equally controversial topics, I chose immigration. As a white woman I didn’t feel capable to create a convincingly compelling piece on race, and as someone who grew up in a household absent of any religion, I didn’t think that suited me well either. It is true that I am also not an immigrant, but for some reason this issue grabbed my attention and filled my head with ideas and places to take it.
IMMI GRA IMMI TION GRA IMMI IMMI TION GRA GRA TION TION
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03 DESIGN PROCESS
I began by interviewing seven of my roommates and friends, all around their early twenties and all living in Chicago now, but who had varying life experiences and educations. I asked each person one question: What does the word “Immigration� make you think of? Their answers were not as varied as I would have expected, but maybe I was just hoping to be surprised. The next question I asked was what they would have thought about immigration ten years ago, when they would have been in middle school, and the only thing we were taught about immigration was about America the great and Ellis Island. I used this survey to give a bit of insight into the implications of a single word and how those implications have changed over my peers and my lifetime, so far.
03 DESIGN PROCESS
The newspaper feel of this project led me to design single pages that were informative and attention grabbing. The size of each page, 30� by 15,� required me to think about text and image in a zoomed out kind of way.
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03 FINISHED PROJECT FRONT COVER
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03 FINISHED PROJECT
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03 FINISHED PROJECT
immigration
immig ration
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03 FINISHED PROJECT
BACK COVER
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TYPE SPECS BOOK TITLE:
Arial Black regular
PROJECT TITLES: Arial Black regular NUMERALS:
Euphemria regular
PROJECT NAMES: Avenir Next light TEXT:
Univers light 45
TOP LEFT PAGE SECTION HEADERS SEQUENCING:
Arial Rounded regular
OBSERVATIONS: Bukhari Script BROADSHEET:
Arial Rounded regular