Dada Poster Final and Story Board

This is my final poster design and story board.  I enjoyed working on this project but ran out of time.  I like the poster but am kinda unsure about the color.  I would have liked to make it even more abstract and bizarre in accordance with dadaism.  But as mentioned earlier I decided to make it more simple by just making all the type horizontal and focusing mainly on mixing typefaces and changing the scale of different characters and words.  The story board is pretty rough but it gets the idea across.  This project has given me a lot of ideas about type and motion which I am eager to explore via after effects and flash.  This was a fun assignment but a little rushed.  Happy Summer! :)

Dada Poster Process

Process of poster development shown below.  I went back and forth and really wrested with the usage of the background texture, placement of text and color.  Eventually I decided to really simplify my approach by making the type strictly horizontal and desaturating the background texture.  Although I initially wanted to make some of the type diagonal and running up and down the page it became clear that I was making it too complex.  I used a combination of the different varieties of Cholla, Futura bold, and Century italics in an attempt to mimic dada typography style that uses a variety of typeface mixed and at different scales.  

Mo' Dada process

Here is a random page of thoughts I jotted down regarding this project and some cool textures I found that are from a painterly table I spotted in Nueberger hall.  I love the typeface Cholla and am using it as the foundation for my poster.  I like how it has different versions, seriffed, sans, slab and so forth, it seems fitting to mix and match style for this project and also use another typeface or two, a heavy bold face and possibly another seriffed face.  These were some of my initial ideas regarding type usage.  Also to place with scale shifts to play into the chaotic dada style I'm drawing influence from.

Dada Research and initial process

For my Dada poem, I'm targeting the style of Dada itself, as it is very intriguing to me.  The style, the period the politics behind it and so forth.  I love the ambiguousness of dada, the infulence it had on other movements and that it existed as a sort of anti-art movement, critiquing art, design and culture itself.  I found a grip of Dada work at sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/index.html some of which I posted below.  I have visited this site numerous times to get ideas and inspirations.  Also show below is the initial construction of the dada poem.  I grabbed an article called the Negative Effects of Internet Usage which is a pretty informal article that was available though an associated content site, cut it up, threw it in a bag and shook it out, following the guidelines of creating this poem.  I dig the result but have edited it some and selected certain sentences to use in the poster/ story board. Dada life!   

Book Series Final Designs

These are the final versions of my book cover series.  As I mentioned earlier I really enjoyed this project and I'm pretty happy with the final results.  

Book Series Process

Documented below is the process of my book series designs.  I really enjoyed this project, it flowed with ease with was nice for a change.  I began with a focus on the typography and the idea of using a distressed typeface.  Initially using a placeholder typeface from dafont.com, but it was too live traced looking, so I decided to generate my own distressed look via the copy machine.  I dig working with the copy machine in this way, it's fun, tactile and pretty immediate.  Franklin Gothic was the typeface I abused with the copy machine, and after many copies I found the textured, distressed look I was going for.  Then I moved on to develop my background textures, in accordance with the subject matter and distressed type.  I altered a photograph of smoke for the Confessions cover, and used a bag for the Junky cover and foil for the Subterraneans cover.  The series quickly came together, and it actually took me a lot longer to get the finer details dialed in, I wrestled with the body copy for awhile and eventually resoled the designs, the finals are shown in the above post.   

Book Cover Beginnings

Shortly after choosing the book series redesign project and choosing the set of books labeled drugs, I immediately began to think of using a distressed typeface.  To explore this idea I found a distressed font in my library called Hand Cancelled by Hoefler Type Foundary.  Although I like this typeface it has a live traced look.  I plan on making my own distressed type via photocopying, unless for some reason I decide not to go with the distressed look, too cliche perhaps?  Naw, I like the distressed look and it seems fitting to the subject matter.  So Below are some mock ups. I wanted to explore using distressed type and some textural imagery.  The imagery is strong but I am going to work on it some more and see where it goes.  I aim to focus more on the type in order to make the type stronger/more dominant.  I had fun making these and am liking where this project is headed so far.  As of now I am making the covers 9.5  x 6.25 in.  So this is where I'm at, so far. I gotta start thinking about the spine and back too.

 

Book Cover Series Research

I have decided to go with the book cover series instead of the dinner invitation. I am going to redesign the the drugs set which consists of: Junky by William S. Burroughs, Confessions of An English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, and The Subterraneans by Jack Kerouac. None of which I have read.  I am somewhat familiar with Burroughs and Kerouac though.  I am going to scope the libraries for these books asap so I can began to read some of them while I work on the designs.  For now I have been reading about the authors and these titles online and have started looking at preexisting designs for these books.  Below are a few things I found.   In addition I cam across a couple loaded links.  This one has a ton of William Burroughs book covers on it!  Thirty or so covers for Junky, even ones in different languages, which is awesome. And I came across this Jack Kerouac book cover flickr group which has loads of cover posted.  That is where I found the two series posted below, the three books series and the four book series with the black and white photos.  It was cool to see some examples of series designed for these books, to see how the designer handled it.  Also I this link has a ton of covers for Kerouac's On the Road, in all different languages too, which was fun to look at.   

Projects 2 & 3 Initial Ideas

For the next two projects I'm going to go with the dinner party invitation and the dada poem projects. I'm still somewhat torn about doing the book series instead of the dinner party invitation, but I will most likely go with the dinner party invitation. I am attracted to the dada poem project because the process is intriguing and dadaism is awesome, I always enjoyed studying dada in my art history classes. The works of John Heartfield, Marcel Duchamp, Many Ray, Max Ernst, George Grosz, Hannah Hoch, etc. were intriguing to me. The whole notion of dada is awesome, even that it still remains ambiguous in a way. I like the fact that it challenges not only culture but art itself. Anyway, another reason I like this project is the fact that it focuses on motion, and that we will be looking at a lot of example of type in motion as this is something I want to experiment with and learn more about. I really want to get adobe after effects and start learning it.
For the dinner party invitation I think it would be fun to do something that is satirical. Like a 2012 dine till the end of time theme. With an aztec stylistic treatment maybe. But the more I think about the dinner invitation, the more I want to do the book designs. The book project might give me the opportunity to explore some books I haven't read and make visual design's based off my interpretation of them. I like the literary aspect of the book project but also it would be a nice piece for my portfolio, I have done some book jacket design but none I'm super stoked on, so this would give me a chance to really make something cool. So I'm definitely going to do the dada project and am still deciding between the books and the invitation, probably the books, so I'm going to review the book assignment specs and sleep on it for now.

1984 wrap up

Above are images of my deliverables made using the typeface I designed nineteen 84. This project really became a process based work, the concept evolved from the typeface. In some regards it would have been nice to know what my concept was from the beginning, but thats not always how I work. That being said I must admit that I did struggle considerably to develop concepts for my deliverables. But I am happy with the way this project evolved and how it turned out. I'm feeling a little swamped with design projects right now. But I may be able to get a book cover done to add to the project and/ or photoshop my posters on some walls in massive rows. The top image is a start to an idea for a book cover. Alas I must move on to another project presently. I enjoyed this project and it really made me appreciate the work that goes into making a functional typeface. Peace is War Nineteen 84 Forevermore.

1984 Kit

Today I scored an ammo box at Andy and Bax's sporting goods to use for my 1984 kit. It's going to include stencils of all the letters, printed on card stock and perforated, (I still need to pick up a perforator), also it will include 2-3 posters going along with the 1984 theme. Big brother is watching...doublethink, newspeak, etc. Also a can of spray paint, I'm working on finishing the label for it now. And maybe some other random paraphernalia, buttons etc, I might as well include a copy of 1984 too. I'm not totally sure what I'm going to put on the box yet or how elaborate to get. It will probably be pretty simple, I'm just thinking of stenciling the name of the typeface on it for now. Going to get down with the stenciling tomorrow afternoon, w00t.

Typeface Campaign

So I feel a little behind with this project but I'm starting to see where I want to go with the campaign part. I originally was going to call my typeface something like Lektrex, Anglex, or Letrex. But after thinking about some of the characteristics of my typeface, that it seems industrial, digital, mechanical, futuristic, angular, stencil like font I decided to call it nineteen 84. Kate said something about it being what people thought the future would look like, and that it seemed to be retro/futuristic in a way, and I thought that was cool so nineteen 84 seems to fit perfectly. I've been kinda struggling to come up with a campaign idea for this typeface but what I would like to do is make a stencil kit. The kit would include stencil cards for each letter and number and some basic punctuation. A spray can, instructions, and possibly an energy drink all wrapped up in an industrial looking box. A wooden crate maybe? An old toolbox? Something of the sort. So this does require me to rework my alphabet in order to make all the letters functional stencils, which I am in the process of doing. I'm working on some digital roughs I will post asap.

Another sketch

I'm liking playing with a very blocky, geometrical concept. I will most likely go this direction, although the final result will probably look nothing like what's below.

More typeface ideas

Here are a few more rough sketch's. The top letter are meant to have a mechanical feel with bolts holding them together, the "arkin" is based off the peeling letter concept I discussed below. The bottom two are experiments with making simple geometric type. The bottom letters are part of a pyramid shape. I really like the idea of making a abstract geometrical typeface. I liked the cubic example Kate posted on the blog a lot.

Initial typeface design ideas

There is this sign kinda close to my house I walk by every so often. The vinyl letters are peeling off the sign. I like the distressed textural look that has emerged. There are many distressed typefaces out there, so I don't know if I will run with this idea or not. Here are a few pix of the sign.

I had a lot of ideas about making lettering out of objects. Making letter forms out of things like matches, nails, wood splinters, rock textures, etc. I don't know if this approach is appropriate for this assignment or not but I wanted to at least try it so I made some letter using tumbled quartz stones.



I also made some letters that have a brush script feel to them. The below sketch is rough, If I choose this route the letters would need to be more refined in terms of cap height, width, weight and so forth. I may also try to do some other sketches based off this idea using a different stylistic approach.


I am also interested in a exploring a few other approaches. Making a really angular, geometric typeface appeals to me, that may or may not be 3-D. A typeface that looks really techie. Or making a typeface based off other typefaces, a cross breed.
These are some of my initial ideas. I'm not totally sure which way to go yet but I'm leaning towards the distressed peeling typeface, or making a teched out geometric typeface.