Module file (Words)

Pre task: ABC primer This first assignment tasked us with creating our own ABC primer, inspired by an aspect chosen by us. The brief mentioned basing them off personal intersts and hobbies although i wanted my primer to say something about the current climate of today. I chose to base my primer on what is a very prevalent issue recently, BLM. I identified my target audience as 4-12 as i feel the younger generation do not have enough in- formation on this issue given to them in a format they understand. Identifiying the format i will use in response to target audience: Here you can see i have chosen to use Leperel- lo as my format as i think this will allow me to make my final design fun and interractive.

After researching other BLM posters and de- signs, i saw two aspects that were constant throughout almost all of them. A black and white colour scheme and a simple two layered design to convey the simple yet strong message. I then started to think about what contextual sources i could study to improve the typograph- ic elements of my design. For this i looked in to Russian Constructivism as this was also cen- tered around a time of great stuggle and change. I looked in to how they used thick industrial typography to convey strength and resillience. In responce i screen printed a set of initial letter forms that then went on to inform my finished design. Letter form experiments in response to Russian constructivism:

Pre task: ABC primer After doing more research in to the BLM move- ment i came across a ‘live death counter’ that charts the number of black people killed by the police in America in recent years. As the main use of an ABC primer is to give a letter a mean- ing, i decided to make each letter represent a black person killed by police in America. I also want the back of my leperello book to feature a repeat pattern of the raised fist that has become a symbol of the BLM protest. Leperello book layout: Birds eye view of leperello layout:

Brief overview: Overall I thought this brief was sucessfull as i ideantified a target audience and created an appro- priate piece of design that was improved throughout by a set of interesting contextual sources. I also feel i worked well within the time given to me and that he end result was striking and interactive, just how i had hoped. Below is one of the double page spreads that was added on to the Leperel- lo, along with the raised fist repeat pattern along the back.

Project 1: Every Face Tells A Story The task for this brief was Poster for Exhibition in Berlin: that In groups of three, we were given a type designer to research in order to present our findings in week 4. When i was first given this brief i familiar- ized myself with my given type designer (wim Crouwel) and the world of design that he was influenced by and ultimately influenced himself. As this is a collaborative project i got in contact with the peers that i have been assigned and engaged in critical debate about how we could refine our research to fit our time limit. To do this we sectioned off parts of research for us all to do. I was given the role of researching his typefaces. To do this i cre- ated a timeline of his typefaces and what sort of influences he had at the time of designing them. We also compared design mock ups and gave eachother feedback that improved our overall presentation. For example the unsentimental style in which crouwel found order reminded me of an exhi- bition i attended in Berlin. It fo- cused on how something that is programmed and soleless can create art that is imperfect and original. This is similar to the way Crouwel used his modular grid system to create his own designs within the brackets of visual consistancy.

After speaking about this with my peers we decided to mimick this by creating a modular grid pattern to be the constant background of our presentation. Project 1: Brief Overview This brief allowed me to add the diffrent approaches and ideas of my peers to my work and ulti- mately create a richer finished project. One negative i could pull from this type of collaborative brief is that i feel it is less sucsessfull in times of Coronavirus. This is due to the lack of face to face discussions, making it a much more lengthy and fraustrating process to what it would of been pre-COVID.

Project 1: 10 presentation slides







Project 2: Found Type The task for this project was to create a digital display typeface using the free community based type design software, Fontstruct. At the first stage of this project i reviewed the brief and the three themes i had to choose between that would ultimately inform my typeface (Hope, community and rebirth). I formed these themes into a mind map to develope as many ideas as possible whilst still in the early stages of my project. I would then go on to highlight the ideas that stick out to me most that i would develope further.



Project 2: Found Type One of the ideas i decided to develope further was ‘Growth and movement’ which i came to out of the theme ‘Re- birth’. I started to look into how designers can communicate life and energy through their type. David Carson is an American designer who did just this. He was the art di- rector of Ray Gun magazine from its founding in 1992 until its final issue in 2000. It was here where he rode the wave of the tech boom taking over society. Mobile phones, computers and the internet. In a way design was being ‘reborn’ into a technilogical era. I have studied his work and the way he adds movement and distortion to his type using a scanner glitch. to deve- lope my research into a set of designs i am going to see the different ways i can use this scanner glitch to give type movement and growth.



Project 2: Found Type Here are some sketches that i have produced in response to the distort- ed scans. The repetition creates the sense of movement, especially in the further digital mockups i made. My next step will be to gain some more contextual knowlege to help me further these designs in Fontstruct.

Printed out digital T’s with tracing paper T’s on top

Project 2: Found Type In Carson’s work he uses varying styles of type, some are painted and sketchy whilst others are digital or printed like they’ve been cut out of a magazine. This random selection creates a sense of immediecy and spontinaity in his work. I feel this is a fitting route to ex- plore for the theme of ‘Rebirth’ as this ‘found’ type communicates themes of adolesence and energy. My next step will be to choose one specific movement or style out of the processes i have mentioned below and develope it further in Fonstruct.



Project 2: Found Type This small section of a mind map i made shows that i chose to focus on the physi- cal movement of glitching. To help me see how i can develope this into a typeface i will research More of Carsons designs and the different ways he distorts his type using glitch.

David Carson ‘Nike advertisment’ 2009: - Enlargements - Rotation David Carson ‘Transworld Skateboarding’ 1990: - overlapping - Grouping - Changing fonts Next step: I will take this research and save it for when i move on to using Font- struct and start to create some for- mal mock up designs for my type.

Project 2: Found Type I have the movement and theme i want my type to represent although i don’t have a completely developed idea of the physical form my type is going to take. Whilst recieving critical feedback from my tutor and peers we talked about whether i should use any lower case letters or if i should stick to all capitals. After doing this i created the mind map seen on the right and decided that all capitals would best suit my chosen theme. I noted that in the early staged of tech- noligy (that my work is being influenced by) a lot of computers only used upper case letters. I also wrote about how i could even make certain letters lower case. This is because i feel i don’t think it is impor- tant for my type to conform to the usual rules of typography as this adds to the feeling that it is still in its early stages and constantly changing.



Project 2: Found Type This is the inital A-Z that i created in re- sponse to my research. I presented this along with my research to my tutor and peers during a group crit. I was given feedback on my type and told i needed to tweak certain parts of my type to add consitancy and also that some letters look too similar. I was also told that i didn’t have enough contextual research and that to improve my type i would have to reference some more artists.



Project 2: Found Type In response to my feedback session i have tweaked certain letters in my A-Z. For example i was told my O and D looked too similar and so i added more of a curve to the front of the D. Also my X was much wider than the other letters and therefore i had to shorten it. In addition to the groups feedback, i re- viewed my own work again and decided that some of the enlarged squares were unnecesary and confusing. I want to find the middle ground between distortion and usability.

Project 2: Found Type Again in response to my feedback i have looked at a couple other designers to hopefully go towards informing my final finished A-Z. The first i looked at was METAHAVEN, a dutch design collective. What stuck out to me about their designs and even their website its self was how they occupied every part of the page, even overlapping in some parts. This chaotic repetition remided me of computer viruses and pop ups. The second designer i looked at was Neue Miller, a type designer who’s use of over- lapping text and colour have a strong digital quality even though they are completely hand rendered. In response to Miller’s work i tried this same repitition technique although i felt it did not look as strong without the use of colour to set the letter forms apart.

Project 2: Found Type One of the last tasks we were given for this brief was to create an A3 typograph- ic poster using our font featuring a ‘tru- ism’ by Jenny Holzer. I chose the truism “everything thats interesting is new” as i felt it fitted best with my theme and the cutting edge technology based artists i researched. I based my colour pallet off some ‘New Wave’ designs that i looked at as new wave was a movement that again oper- ated in the early days of technology and the internet. In this design i used one simple piece of imagery, the repitition of a block of colour to mirror the look of tabs on a computer, an effect used often in ‘New Wave’.

Project 2: Brief Overview I enjoyed the conceptual reserching that i did to inform my ideas at the early stages of this project although i feel that my ideas were hindered by the abilities of the Font- struct software. This being said, i feel my finished type was still very strong as due to Fontstructs limited abilities and our lim- ited text size, my ideas were refined and simplified into a strong concept.





Project 3: Quote Unquote for the first half of this brief i had to produce an A4 typographic resonse to a quote from my chosen designer April Grieman. Whilst doing so i had to follow a set of guides including font, allignment and size. I had to find a way to give my design meaning whilst still staying within these borders. After researching Grieman I could see her work takes on a collage-like look. Lots of pat- tern, textures and geometric shapes. Often the type in her work acts as part of these shapes and exists in a three dimensional space. To mirror this i created a geometric pattern that would then inform the layout of my type. I even tried taking away the pattern alltogether and letting the type communicate the shapes, although i felt this design didn’t look as strong.

Project 3: Quote Unquote In the second half of this brief we were told to create a four paged A4 pamphlet, using text AND image found from an interview that is provided for us. I decided to carry over the geometric pattern i had used before whilst adding in a image of Grieman in center screen, spreading over both pages. I did this not only becuase it establishes Grieman as the focus of the pamphlet but also because it mirrors the layout of the cover of ‘Wet Magazine’ in 1979, one of her most famouse designs. Wet magazine, 1979: In the next two page spread, there is a repi- tition of an image of an old school ‘Apple 2’ computer. I used this image as in this part of the interview Grieman talks about how she was one of the first designers to work on a computer. I repeated the image to gimmik the look of a Apple computer recieving a notifica- tion. A technique used often in the “New Wave” genre of design that Grieman helped start.

Project 3: Brief Overview I found this brief both extremely challeng- ing and rewarding as due to the briefs strict guidelines I had to create a mini- malist typographic poster that i thought to look refined and professional. As for the double A3 spread, i was able to think more about imagery and colour aswell as type and layout. After showing it to my peers in a group crit, i was told it was ‘an accurate reflection of Grieman as an artist through type and image’.

Project 3: A4 typographic

Project 3: Double A3 spread







Project 4: publish and be damned As this was a collaborative project the first thing i did was find a partner to work with. Once i had done this we discussed what common intrests we had and which of those are prominent as- pects in Bristol. We decided to look in to the underground music scene in Bristol, specifically focusing in on free parties and illegal raves as this is something we both had exstensive primary experiences of. We also believe the media to be unnecessarily villifying the underground music scene and so we want a chance to give the read- er a completely different perspective. Our next step was to write out a 50 word sum- mery of what we wanted our publication to do. 50 word summery: We are making this publication to give an older generation an inside look at the underground music scene in Bristol and to ultimately make them feel less alienated by it. We want to ex- press that rave culture is no different to what it may be remembered as and is still all about acceptance and collective experiences. After writing this me and my partner engaged in critical debate about how we would best collect primary and secondary research and who we could reach out to to get it.

Me and my partner talked over what format we want our publication to be in and made a selection of possible formats that would work best for our target audience. To help us make some decisions on the format of our publication we researched free parties and illegal raves and the sum of ways they are premoted and run. We sided with making a zine, although we are going to add in other interactive aspects to our publication to contextualise it more with the theme of the underground music scene.

Project 4: publish and be damned We compiled this list of the ways illegal raves are premoted/hidden as we thought it would give us some ideas of how we could premote our publi- cation and get it out there whilst still giving it the clandestine feel of an illegal rave. Using this list, me and my partner decided to look in to glow in the dark ink and how it can be used in screen printing. After watching the video shown on the right we decided to order some glow in the dark ink to print a part of our publication with. We decided to do this as much like illegal raves, it would make our publication only accessable after a certain time.

We discussed what would be our best sources of informatiom and who we could reach out to for both the condemning and commending side of the publication. Aswell as DJ’s involved in the un- derground music scene we also reached out to a recently popular movement called ‘Let Us Dance’ as we thought they could give us a statement as to why having a thriving music scene is so vital and what would happen if it dissapeared.

Project 4: publish and be damned This being a three week project, we were already on a fairly tight schedule. This was made even worse due to the printing facilities being closed one week before the end of this project. With this in mind, me and my partner decided to make our publication entirely digital. This meant we couldn’t use our glow in the dark embel- lishments. This also meant that our condemming and commending points would be fairly mixed up. To set these two aspects apart we have layed out our condemming and commending interviews seperately. When designing the layout of our zine we took inspiration from indipendant under- ground music magazines, including ‘The Move’ which focuses in on club and rave culture in England. Many of their designs look disarranged and chaotic. This gives their magazine a collage-like immediacy. In response to this, some of our pages are collaged and have a hand rendered quality. The Move Magazine, 2017:

Project 4: Brief Overview I enjoyed the early stages of this brief in which me and my partner identified our source material and reached out to the right people to gather information on both the condemming and commending side of the underground music scene in Bris- tol. I also enjoyed working in a small team as i was able to create a richer finished piece.