TYPOGRAPHY & LAYOUT DESIGN: EXPERIMENTAL TYPE
FOUND TYPOGRAPHY: NATURAL ENVIRONMENT
Part of my project was to find a naturally occurring alphabet within my surroundings. During Lockdown I have been going on many walks around the South Downs, so I decided to look out for the forms of letters within my regular route: whether they were natural elements such as curved branches, or man-made fencing and farm gates.
Believe it or not, none of these images are manipulated! It was fun to look out for horse hoof imprints in the mud, oddly shaped Clematis trees and even cowpats that resembled typography.
FOUND TYPOGRAPHY: A PINK ALPHABET
Next, I chose to look around my own bedroom to look at the varied use of typography in my own possessions- clothing, notebooks, makeup, jewellery etc. As my favourite colour is pink, there was a plethora of pink items to photograph! I made this 'mosaic' from the many letters and shades I found.
Within this image there are recognisable brands associated with the colour pink- Barbie, Glossier etc. Quite a few of my clothes also feature bold pink themed embroidery or slogans- many of them being Upper Case and Serif in style.
As I am also very obsessed with skincare, and skincare packaging, I decided to take a closer look at the lettering featured on the many boxes I have collected over the past year. It was interesting to see the varied styles of branding, and the mixture of fonts.
As you can see there is a real mixture of styles here. I like the contrasts between the bold uppercase Sans Serif type used by 'The Inkey List', compared to the Korean brand 'I'm From' who use much more delicate, Serifed fonts.
CREATED TYPE
My next challenge was to create letter forms using unusual or found materials. As a former embroidery designer I have a lot of beads, sequins, embroidery thread and sewing tools lying about! I decided to incorporate these into typography designs, combining my love for embellishment with type design.
DESIGN ONE: PIN PRICK DRAWINGS
After looking at many detailed and textured pin prick drawings as part of my creative research, I decided to create the imprint of a decorative, Serif style font on card, using a push pin. I then experimented taking photos of light through the dots created by the pin, and distorting the letters with light.
This is an outline drawing of the same word, with photos taken over different light sources to get varied effects. I like how bright light coming through the holes looks a bit like Rhinestone lettering!
I love the ghostly look that shining a torch behind these drawings gave. The use of black card as my background helps to give a sharp contrast. Where some of the dots and light merge, I begin to see new outlines within the design. These sloping variations of the original letters give new emphasis to the Serifs and curves within each drawing.
DESIGN 2: NEGATIVE SPACE THREAD EMBROIDERY
I chose to develop the use of the pin pricks from my first design into something more colourful. Utilising the pin pricks for the outline of a phrase, and surrounding shape, I then stitched a variety of colours of thread between these holes. This created text by surrounding my letter outlines with a linear pattern.
I chose a sans-serif font for this design, and made the rest of my design geometric and spiky to also reflect this. I chose to create a phrase based on an embroidery pun, to inject some humour into the page.
I like the mix of neon and pastel threads making up this design, it adds to the impact of the letters but is not an expected colour combination.
DESIGN THREE: HAMA BEADS
As part of my experimentation with many materials for this project I came across Hama beads- and thought they would be perfect for recreating a grid-like, digital effect font. Using pegboards, I laid out the beads in the form of letters and ironed them together- creating molten bubble type writing. This process was really enjoyable and I loved seeing how the beads transformed into one object.
I took photos of each letter before ironing them- showing the separate beads in their grid-like formation. I chose to use a colour scheme of bright neon yellow, white and bubblegum pink colours: the pink beads were the main body of the letters, the white beads the outline and highlights, and the yellow beads made a 'shadow' effect.
After ironing, the beads had merged together and lost their round forms. I deliberately stopped ironing when there were still some holes in the main letters as I wanted to retain a mixture of textures within the design. I like that the beads became more square and squashed looking.
Next, I chose to embellish into the outlines of these letters with sequins and beads, to distort the letters further, and add extra surface decoration. I enhanced the neon yellow and white colours of the base design, but added metallic glass beads and iridescent sequins to lift it.
I also thought it would be fun to create some mock-ups using a slight variation of my Hama bead font, for potential branding ideas. The word 'Melt' was one I chose due to it's link to the process of creating the Hama bead letters, but it struck me that it could also be used for products such as Ice cream or Scented candles!
