03 | Typography: ISTD
Brief
The ISTD Student Assessment scheme undergoes annual reviews to align with current best practices in design education and industry. This project evaluates strategy, research, target audience, concept development, typography skills, specifications, presentation, and credibility. Students are required to choose and complete one of the following briefs: Open/Close, Sustainability, Mapping the World, The Body Politic, or The Spaces Between.
Deliverables
01. Design strategy
02. Research
03. Design development (process work)
04. Specifications/Grid(s)
05. Final outcomes
Rationale
The concept revolves around a recently departed individual navigating an abandoned world where they once thrived. Faced with the task of seeking forgiveness from the afterlife and redeeming themselves from past wrongdoings in their previous life, the protagonist strives to clear the path for their journey into the beyond.
Research
Heaven and Hell are simple concepts. When people die, good ones go to Heaven, while the bad ones go to Hell. But what about the others, those who aren’t good enough to meet the strict prerequisites of Heaven, nor evil enough to deserve Hell?
Enter this trope
This trope is about places, usually called Purgatory or Limbo, which serve as an intermediate afterlife between Heaven and Hell, where morally average people go after they die. The concept not being unique to any one religion or universal to most of them, however, can mean the names get co-opted for any number of other purposes. Note
Often the first place that people come when they die, this may be simply an Afterlife Antechamber: a waiting room of the dead, where the souls of the departed may be assigned to their final destination by some manner of Celestial Bureaucracy. Alternatively, in the event of a Near-Death Experience, this may serve as a brief respite where the hero can confer briefly with a dead loved one or mentor before coming Back from the Dead to fulfil their ultimate destiny.
What these (meta)physical places are actually like varies greatly. Sometimes it’s shown as another world, much like our own. Bleaker works may depict it as a dull greyish void where nothing happens, or a misty ruin, shadowy forest, endless cave or desert, or a dark version of the real world. Sometimes it’s a literal waiting room, or a bright garden or chamber of white stone with light pouring in from Heaven proper. The Limbo of The Divine Comedy is a serene and beautiful but endlessly dreary castle on the outskirts of Hell. It won’t be a place of endless fiery torment, but it won’t be paradise, or even as relatively pleasant as being alive.
Initial Concept development
Strategy
Typography
Colour Pallete
How to build a box
Leaflet
Playing cards
Self rendered mock-ups
