Typography Project Review

Scope and Process

The scope of the typography project was to become more familiar with typography styles, manipulating text, and become a better brainstormer. The process was long but not entirely difficult. First, we thought of words that described ourselves as people. While many took a physical approach, like "I like ice cream", I mostly chose descriptions like "I am outgoing" and "I am a go-getter".  This ended up being more of a challenge because it is much easier to say "I love" an object and then image trace it and paste it onto type. We singled out 12 words and drew 3 sketches for each, with a total of 36 sketches in our sketchbooks. After getting them approved and reviewing a few lessons on how to alter our type correctly, we were sent off to look for fonts and start piecing together the rough drafts of our "name plates" on Illustrator. I really enjoyed browsing through fonts on places like Behance, DaFont.com and Pinterest. I ended up with a large variety of fonts to work with and plenty of time to get my names just right! Then, when we felt comfortable with our work, we placed our type into an InDesign template and critiqued each other on how we could make our projects look even better. I got a lot of good information out of our critique day and it helped me a lot! I altered quite a few of my name plates and then cut and mount them onto a matte board.

Learning

I learned many things during this project. Illustrator is an amazing digital workspace and provides an endless amount of tools and features to create your best work possible. If you take the time to learn all of the amazing things it can do and what different icons mean, it will help you tremendously in the long run. The tools I used most were the create outlines and expand options, which allowed me to really be able to manipulate type and do it on different computers as well (without having to re-download a font). I also used many vector images to incorporate a message in my text. It was easy to get inspiration by simply searching a word on a creative space on Bechance and seeing how other creatives interpreted it. Although there was not much collaboration in this project, critique day was key for many of us because it allowed us to give and receive positive, encouraging feedback to each other as peers. I helped many people and showed them how to do certain things on Illustrator when they asked. Working together was an important part of success and always will be.

Changes and Experiences

Although I was happy with my fonts digitally, I wish I would have been better and cutting and mounting them when they were on paper. Even though it was my first time doing so, I was disappointed with the job I did on my matte board and wish I would have kept better track of measurements and been more careful while cutting straight lines and accurate measurements on my project. Something I would do the same is ALWAYS ask for feedback on things I'm uncertain on. Having my talented peers sitting near me helped a lot when it came to asking if something looked right or didn't look right. I was also able to see what other people were doing and able to recognize their individual style as creatives, which was very cool. I will draw from my cutting and mounting experience a VERY big lesson: always pay attention to measurements! My pre-production experience went well and I will continue to finish my sketches in a timely manner. My general thought on this project is that I could have done better on the physical/mounting side. All in all, I had a good time manipulating fonts and learned very valuable lessons on what it takes to go through pre-production, production, and post-production as a graphic designer.