I spent a lot of time working on this project because I wanted to explore more about what InDesign can do as I am new to it. In this project, the first thing I had to do was to choose a typeface that would work for the majority of the words. After searching through Helvetica family typefaces and weights, I ended up choosing Helvetica Light because it is the most neutral to me. If I want my words to be bold, increasing sizes would do it. Or if I want my words to look softer, Helvetica Light size 48pt or less would be a good choice.

For my design approach, at first I just played around with each word, quickly creating as many different designs as possible. Then I went over each design and made some adjustments. Since I am new with InDesign, sometimes I struggled to turn my ideas into exactly what I wanted. Therefore, while working on this project, I also watched some tutorials online to enhance my skills. I did not only try to captivate the meaning of each word but also wanted it to be aesthetically pleasing as well. For example, for the word “Quiet,” I have two different ways of thinking about how to design it: One is to make the letter “q” stand out from the rest of the letters; and one is going after its literal meaning, making the word really quite and small. Or for “Hostage,” I wanted to make it simple, bold, crisp, and constrained because that is what hostage should suggest. Therefore, I just simply used a much larger size 200pt with negative spacing and kerning to make each letter attached tightly to each other. I also tried to create an angled version of it. Generally, for all of the words, I wanted to see how they would look different just by using various sizes, positions, and angles. Sometimes, it got difficult because I ran out of ideas and designed each word similarly.

Through this project, I learned how to set up a new document in InDesign as well as what gutter, bleed, and picas are. I also acquired many new InDesign skills although I barely knew anything about about it before that.  I gained the understanding of tracking and kerning, which was one of the most important piece of knowledge I learned. Without proper space between letters or words, the design would look awkward and unpleasing. Understanding how letters stand next to each is as important as having the big idea for a design.