Reading about type

The most important things about type are placement, point size, typefaces, tracking, and kerning.  All of these things effect how the type looks on the page.  After viewing these pages there is an unlimited way to change text.  Tracking and kerning are a tool that can change text even more on a page. This affects the spacing surrounding each element, which can give a tight locked feel, or a loose airy one.

A guideline that I found in typography in lawyers was interesting.  It explained that even dashes on computers are for different purposes and they all can affect the way a layout looks. The use of different font effects can help focus eyes to it.  Italicizing or writing a word in all caps can guide a readers eye to it and show what's most important on the page. Use grid based layouts when using typography.  This helps you lay out text and find organization between the text and white space.  Grids are an underlying structure for typography.  You don't always have to work on paper, meaning words and text can go off the page.  This creates a new border to a page that can be very interesting.

One thing I want to pay attention to is the tracking and kerning and different font aspects I can choose.  I can make sure all the type fits together how I want it.  I will have to take a closer look to see how all the letters look like when they are next to each other. I can change the way the font is set to make the eye move how I want it to on a document.  Italics, colors, and All caps all will affect this.

I was surprised to see an article about typography and lawyers.  Type is for everything and a lot of people don't realize that.  I like to know about typography as an art form because I get to look at articles or art work that use art and understand it.  I have studied typography before and I have explained what it is to many people, my parents and roommates. It's interesting to see how it effects almost everything you see and many people have no knowledge about it.   

Mr Badger-Deviant Art from Typography is Sexy.
I enjoy this image because of the old, aged look of the background.  The blues, reds, and blacks all contrast together and really make the words be the main focus of the image.  The ground works to involve the figure.  The ground is more organic against the harsh angles of the text. The proximity of the words is very close and the viewer can't read it and it makes me wonder what it says.  It doesn't bother me that I can't read it because i read the whole image as art not text.

DESIGN BRIEF 2

In this project we will design a form and a handout.  I have used InDesign before so I will most likely use the 02 files, which are more advanced.  I'm most nervous about designing these forms because I have never designed for this medium.  It seems very straight forward and not very creative, but I'm excited to make my handouts original. I'm concerned about how we will be able to create a document for an audience.  It will be interesting to learn and see the different ways people layout the text for different audiences.

The audience for this tile will be children, grandparents, and families.  This design can be playful and fun to relate to this audience.  People go to the zoo to have fun and see lots of animals.  I wanted my design be fun and professional.  My design is very playful.  I used the text in an organic way with round shapes.  Out of the text I created a shape similar to a butterfly.  I wanted to have more open space in this design, which is why there is a lot of negative space.  This also helps give the text shapes more room to give the appearance of being free and flying like butterflies. This fun animal shape relates to my audience because it’s imaginative for children and made for this fun environment.  As mentioned, the audience goes to the zoo to see animals, and this tile reflects the main purpose of the zoo.  It’s also professional because it’s not overcrowded and it would look great on a bench in the zoo.  I learned a lot while creating this zoo tile.  I had a lot of designs, and ended up creating a new design for the final tile.  I wanted to create something different from the other tiles, which is why the tile has a lot of negative space.  The way the eye moves through the tile is from the white space, not because of the text.  This is one of my most playful designs I made and it represents zoo in the best way for the audience.  I learned that leaving white space in a design is another design element.  I used the letter q in this design.   

I started this project thinking about who will see it. A diverse group of people use public transportation everyday, meaning children to employees to seniors will see this tile.  I wanted a crisp, clean design that people could see and understand in a hurry.  It has to relate to a mass amount of people.  Specifically, my design works because at a quick glance the whole audience, young to old, can see the resemblance to a transit station.  My design moves the eyes quick from the right of the page to the left.  The diagonals and horizontal lines  allow the eye to move quickly across the page.   In this project,  I learned that there are an unlimited number of ways to put text together.  It was very easy to come up with ideas.   For this project I used the letter w and stacked them up together.  The typeface helped create a line that almost looks like a telephone wire.  This helped me think of transit station because the trains move from one place to another constantly.  Next time, I’ll try to be more creative and create more tiles to choose from.  I’ve used illustrator before and had a very similar project, so I didn’t learn very much from illustrator in this project.

The audience for a poet’s kitchen is himself, his family, and other poets.  People will be inspired by the floor because it’s in a poet’s house.  I wanted my design to be light and creative.  I picture a poet being quiet and artistic.  This design should inspire what the whole rest of the kitchen will look like.  My design is appropriate for the audience because it’s a light, delicate design.  It’s inspiring because it’s made with light, beautiful, organic shapes.  It looks like calligraphy, which is an art form itself.  This design can inspire other poet’s and artists the poet may know.  His family will be inspired by this and will understand what his style is like.  I learned that there are many ways to portray a poet.  There’s the light delicate designs like mine, but there’s also the dark, crowded tiles for poets like Edgar Allen Po.  This was interesting because people have different perspectives on what a poet is like.  I learned connecting different text shapes can create designs that don’t look like letters at all.  I used the letter x for this design.

Figure or Ground?

 In art, the figure of a design is always the object your eye will see first.  It can be a form, shape, silhouette, or the object.  It is always the first thing you see because it will be the most interesting part of the piece of art. A picture will always have positive and negative space, and the figure is always the positive space.  The negative space, or ground will always be surrounding the figure.  Although finding the figure in a piece of art seems obvious, there can be more than one figure in an art work.

This brings me to the ground of an art work.  The ground can be the surrounding area or the background of a design.  This is everything else besides the figure(s) in the art work.  Again the ground is the negative space of the picture.  As mentioned previously, there can be more than one figure in the piece.  This can mean that the figure and ground can switch.  In a famous picture of a vase made of two heads, the figure can be the heads making the ground be the vase and vice-versa.

This example brings me to show how important the figure and ground are.  They are inseparable and always work together.  Both must look interesting to bring energy to a piece of art.  Having knowledge of these terms will help us and other understand art.  It will give us a reason for why we place things where we did and why we left so much negative space.  This is a way I will use it in my own work.  I will be more conscious of how the positive and negative space interact with each other.


I decided to have the positive and negative spaces place with each other in one of my "poet's kitchen" tiles.  The x's are the first thing seen, but the ground is seen through it creating more shapes to look at.  The figure and ground are both interesting and are inseparable.  It's balanced because the amount of figure and ground is very closely related.
 

Design Contexts

1. Transit station- The audience would be a majority of people: old people, middle-aged people, and children.  The public takes the transit station daily, whether it's to work or school.  Homeless people would see it.  It could inspire an art student.  A worker in the transit station. People who vandalize public property may be influenced by this design by creating more artwork on it, or copy it somewhere else. Business men to homeless people trying to make a dollar.  This design has to be crisp and clean so it can be easily seen in a hurry and relate to mass amounts of people. 


2. Zoo-Children, grandparents, and families would see this.  Workers in the zoo will see it, other adults who are walking by, or a corporate manager of the zoo.  This shows the design has to be playful, but also professional. Most of these people would be middleclass to rich because they have to pay to get in the zoo.  The design will have to be entertaining for children and young adults.  People who work at other zoos might be there and compare the zoo to their own.  Tourists can be there and compare the new zoo to their own.

3. Poet- Himself, family, and children.  Other poets or artists could see it, which could inspire a work of art.  This could cause the poet to inspire what he's eating in the kitchen, and utensils and anything else he will put in the kitchen.  Friends of the poet would also see it.  New friends may see it and the picture would reflect the personality of the poet.    

DESIGN BRIEF 1

Does multiple versions of same letter mean we can scale or rotate the letter in any way?

When we mount the final version on art board, do you have a certain size and color you would like them to be on?

Will we ever be using these tiles again?

Should we be worried about how each separate tile design will look if we made multiples and placed them together?