Thursday 24 November 2011

Task 19

My own work for this project

In one of the tasks we were asked to use a typeface for sex. So with condoms and pva glue, I wrote the word sex. 
By doing this, its given it the dirty side of sex, with the mess from the condom, like its split and came out on the bed sheets. 

I think its more fun working with materials to make a word more interesting or give it its meaning rather than finding a font to suit it. 

"Would You Do It Again?"

I was given the phrase "would you do it again?" my thoughts were about relationships to start with but progressed onto murder and self harm after relooking at Sagmeister's work which is a bit gruesome for some people with the cutting on skin and making letters with pegs with skin. I wanted to make my work reflect on his and make it gruesome and gory, so I used fake blood left over from London Zombie Day and used what I use to make flesh wounds to create it on my arm, as I wasn't going to take it literally and carve it into my flesh. 

I used tissue, PVA glue, paint and fake blood to create my work, which I did on my own arms and then photographed it. These two images are two i printed out, the bottom one was printed twice because of the colour, in the end, I chose to use the first two sets as it was brighter and easier to read than the other. 
The first image (top) is the photo taken of my arms with the wounds on them. I took the wounds off (which are now in my sketchbook) and took a photo of them looking like torn off flesh from a victim, choosing to relate murder with self harm. 
I chose to have two images on my final piece because of the phrase, would you do it again?, which works well using two images, showing the 'again' part of the phrase. 
Overall, I am really happy with my final images and think I did well to create them and put my mind to it to think of something different from the starting point of relationships and development. 

Task 11


 select an appropriate typeface for: Anger, Fear, Love, Sex, Fruit and Surprise


I started with anger as I felt this could be the easiest to do. I thought bold letters could easily put this message across to the viewers. Also, typefaces that look like they have been almost cut into something, from the emotion of anger, which the first two were aimed at. The others were bold and almost shouting, so I felt they worked well for the word. 
 Fear was just as easy as anger in my eyes. I wanted to find typefaces that showed genuine fear, shaky text. The first seemed horror like, and horror is a fear. The third down was cracked, showing how uneasy you are when you are fearing something. I felt this worked well with the emotions alongside the fear itself. 
 When looking at the word fruit, I came across type I have seen on packaging, making something look more juicy with its font. I think all the typefaces I found for this word work well, showing the juiciness. I think the first one is questionable, but the F gave me a feeling of how fruit is, curved and luscious. 


Love was not a hard one to do. I found cursive lettering, ones that are usually found on valentines cards. They all work because they are all joined, and love brings people together, so I brought that across with the typefaces I chose. 



Sex is similar to love, but very different at the same time. Yes, sex can be known as love making, but sometimes sex is just sex? I chose again fonts that join together, which imitate people getting close together, which is what sex is, being close. 
The top one however, I feel doesn't say sex like the other typefaces I found. So I changed it so the letters were more close together, giving it that extra element.


Surprise I wanted to find type that seemed, not quite in your face, but just with that spark of surprise. Like the third one down, where its cursive and nice, it brings the element of that surprise being beautiful and something happy. 

Task 13


with ribbon, pins and a range of letters, create as many varied letterforms as possible.

Our group was given from Q-Z to do as many as we could in different ways. 
I wasn't keen on this task but it was a different way of communicating letters. There are a lot of ways to experiment with ribbon as its flexible and you can use it in any way, by cutting, curling, twisting and so on. 

I felt we could have produced so much more, and more interesting letter forms, which we started to do towards the end using pipe cleaners. 
I would have liked to produced a lot more, maybe the whole alphabet using different ways of using ribbon. Would be interesting to do something like that, such as the Drawing project, where we did 101 ways of drawing an object, could incorporate it with type, 101 ways of creating a letter. Maybe I could consider this to take the project further? If I had time during the project, I would have. But I could come back to it when looking at type again in the future.

Task 18

Using the keen eye you developed in Task 8, photograph shapes and forms in the environment that not only spell out, but relate to the following three words: Round Natural Dark

 Round was the easiest to do of the lot, using some of the photos I had taken earlier from type in my surroundings in task 8 of the project. 
I used the toilet handle for the R, a fan inside a car for O, a hook for U, railings for the N and a car mirror for a D. I think this went well as it was easy to find rounded objects that made up the letters of the word 'round'.


Natural was a hard word to come across using only natural materials. I found a patch of overgrown plants, weeds and such and began to take photos of everything, trying to find letters in the shapes they made. When I got back with my images, I realized you couldn't tell what letters I had taken, so I zoomed into the photos to find letters within the ones I took. I found a few hidden and this was the outcome. I really like the finished piece for this, I feel its been done well using exactly what I have found within nature to create a natural piece. 

Dark was a difficult one to do, as I wanted to do something with shadows. I wanted to try finding shapes that made the letters with their shadows but I couldn't find any, so I decided to make a template, and use a light to shine through it to create a the shadow around the text. 
I would try to find the shapes in my surroundings but lack of time left me the only choice of doing it this way. I could return to this at a later date and try to find shadows to make the letterforms if possible. 

Task 12

Use your hands to create the form of each letter in the alphabet. 


We got into groups and made letter forms using out hands for this task, a bit different from using our whole bodies. I felt this one came out more of a high quality than the bodies one. The idea is more relaxed, and the shapes are smooth and can be seen clearly. 
I really like the outcome of these images and they all work nicely together creating a series that look beautiful together. I like both the colour and the black and white version, so I have included them together here. The black and white one seems shadow like, giving it a different feel to the soft colour version. Both could create different messages if put into words. Maybe in a later post I will put some words together and review them, or update this post.

Task 17


sequence of photographs, in which one shows a word, created in an appropriate manner, and the next shows something happen to that word

For this part of the project, I decided to revisit the task on playing with food and use the idea of the food being eaten bit by bit. 

I once again made a toastie, which failed on me and came out in a mass of beans, cheese, hotdog and bread on my plate. A complete mess. So that was it, I decided the word should be mess, so I crafted the word with the remainder of my food. I took a photo of the plate with all the letters, then as I ate them one by one, i took more photos. 

I resulted in making a slideshow of the pictures, put together as a GIF to show the sequence. 



Task 16

create the time of day using items around you at that moment.

I had so much around me when doing my final piece for this project, so I made the time out of a background of fake blood, ripped paper, pencils, glue and paint. I didn't like the outcome of it as it seems rushed, but that is what I had around me all night. (19:14)

I then chose to do another piece, based on what I was doing during a lunch break, which was eating a sandwich. I don't normally, but that day I began tearing the crusts off. So I decided to write the time using them for this project. (11:17)


Task 15

use what is around you to create a word describing what you are doing

I was doing a fair bit of work for uni, working on too much at once and became stuck in the middle of it all, stuck on ideas, stuck with imagination and stuck in with it all. I was pretty much STUCK. So I chose to use this word for this task. 

I used PVA glue and poured it onto newspaper, writing out the word. I would have used coloured paper but I had none, so newspaper it had to be. I thought, what better way of getting across the word 'Stuck' than using glue? 

I could have produced a lot better than this, maybe with things stuck to the word, showing bits everywhere, like how my mind couldn't quite grasp an idea. 

Task 14


Using your clothing, fashion accessories, make-up and other items from your ‘wardrobe’ you are asked to spell out three words that represent your fashion sense and the clothes you wear.
My style is known as ‘Cybergoth’ or ‘Industrial’, which is a style based on the future (such shops as Cyberdog). Cyber is the more colourful side to the style, whereas Industrial is the darker side which has all the pvc outfits. 



I’m a mix between the both. But I showed my style for this project as colourful, Alternative (Alt.) and cyber, using my hairfalls, boot covers, corsets and accessories. In the other picture, ‘Scary’ it shows my darker side, which people have often labelled me as being scary, especially when I was in school. So it shows a contrast in how people see me to how my fashion is and that underneath what I wear and how I choose to look, I’m a nice person who gets on with anyone. 

Task 7

Using typefaces available on the University computers illustrate three pairs of antonyms. Think about the opposite relationship within the pair and how you might exploit this to better communicate both words


I chose Hot and Cold first, and decided on using colours, red and blue. I used liquify to change the word ‘hot’ so it was as though there were flames coming from the top of the letters. With cold, I used a blur effect, giving it the shivering feeling you get when you are cold. I felt this worked well and much better than the idea for hot. 
For solid, i just chose to use a bold typeface, to create the solid look of the letters. Whereas for liquid, again, I used liquify. I felt liquid could have been produced a lot better, maybe if I used a different font to write the word then play around with it. 
For loud, I thought of speakers, and the vibrations used. I didn’t want to use the same effect as my cold idea, so I used a wind effect, i felt this still worked, like noise levels in a way. but very sutily on one side of the text. I used a bold font to put across the loud feeling of the word. With quiet I simply did the opposite, using a calligraphy type font, in a small size and dropped the opacity down so its softly put on the page below loud.
For short, I simply shortened the word slightly then added the word tall above it, showing its tallness compared to the short word. I stretched ‘tall’ to create its height difference from short. 

Task 6

use the typefaces available on the University computers to spell out your name reflecting your previously chosen emotion of characteristic.
Here are two of my ideas for this task. My word was ‘Random’ which reflects my mind, and how some people see me.
For the first I used symbols, creating the ‘random’ within the piece, using a hand sign as a Y, a box as an N and so on. I like this idea, but I feel the letters could have been placed more randomly to give off more the feel. 

The second piece I chose fonts at random as well as the font size, then placed them randomly on the page. I feel this one works as it shows the meaning of random and it shows the feeling of the word as its all over the place.

Task 4


Using your bodies you must create shapes, structures and compositions representing each letter of the alphabet.
For this task, I worked with Kristina and Natalie, creating the alphabet using our bodies. I chose the best images and put them together creating one big image. I decided to have a colour and a black and white version also. 
It was hard getting ideas on how to create the shapes to do easily, but we managed to do the whole alphabet which I felt turned out rather well, working as a team to create the shapes and come up with ways of creating the letters. 

I think the S could have been a lot better, and doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the images, as the rest are created using our bodies and not just our hands. Also, the backgrounds are all the same, using the walls, apart from the S.

Task 3

use your food or related items to write one or more words explaining you felt about the meal.
 For this part of the project, I had a cheese, beans and hotdog toastie, making a right mess of everything. The first word that came to mind when preparing my toastie was ‘yum’ so I started off with using left over beans to write the word on my plate whilst waiting for it to toast. 
Once it was done, I made the word from the actual toastie. Accidently, (in the second down on the left) the toastie seemed like a mouth, with a tongue coming from it, which I felt made the picture feel more ‘yum’. 
At the top left, I made another which came out a complete mess, so I wrote the word ‘mess’ with the remainder of the toastie.

Task 2


Using one sheet of A4 paper per attempt, you are asked to fold, screw, bend, twist etc. the page to create either initial of your name.
To create this letters, I used an A4 sheet of paper for each, using folding techniques and experimentation with paper without cutting or tearing. In most of my letters, I found that folding was the best way to create the letter form, however, in one I twisted the paper to create a C.
I found it hard to go any further with it, without being able to cut the paper, however, it is a good experiment to do when playing around with materials to create different things. I could look at origami in the future when doing a project like this again, maybe creating more letters and challenging myself with the harder ones such as ‘K’.