2050spring2016

This assignment taught me how to use my imagination, because the tools we had were pretty limited (only one type, one weight of font, one color, no repeating). It really made me think in a different way, and it was really fun in the end. I enjoyed the whole process, beginning with sketching on a tracing paper, and then translating my ideas into a digital form. The assignment proved to me that it is worth doing hand sketches- even if in the end I change my final designs a little bit.

I used more than one approach for the Seven Types of Contrast assignment. First, I thought about how the words sounded when pronounced. Aspects of words like tones and accents helped me visualize what I wanted to put onto paper. Lastly, I thought about the meaning of the words. For example, if the word was “silly,” I would want to place the letters in random spots on the paper because doing so would match the word’s definition. The assignment made me realize that there it is quite difficult to make a word that is aesthetically appealing to the eye while being limited on options. I was only allowed to make changes to the size, position, direction, and form of the words and had to use Helvetica. It was a challenging task, but it allowed me to focus more on the design of the word rather than the font type.

Christopher Wong

For this assignment, I tried to be as creative as possible considering the challenge of only using Helvetica as the typeface.  For me, I really took placement of the words on the page into consideration as well as font size, uppercase or lowercase, rotation, lines through the words and placement of the letters to represent the words meanings.  I wanted it to look a bit more clean and neat and not all over the place.  I found it challenging to design the word romantic in a way that it would represent the meaning.

But overall, i learned that there are many other more ways of designing words aside from just using different typefaces.  There are still ways to be creative when facing constraints and this assignment helped realize that.

My design approach for the assignment is to gain experience to express a word with different design of the word styles, such as designing the word into a wave, curve, reflection, different font size and etc. Besides the design of the word itself, I also want express the meaning of the word by my design. I was difficult to choose a typeface that can suit to every word, but I chose to use “Helvetica”. It is a simple and neutral that can fit each word. I found difficulty during the process that the words “quiet” and “romantic” were hard to express. In order to be creative, I tried to break the word into syllable like “ro man tic” and skip some letter of a word like “qui_t”. After reading the textbook, I also considered using the letter space.

So as to get more ideas and to be creative, I became more aware to any graphic design and fonts of magazine, chocolate wrap, and brand logos, etc. More, I noticed sketching is important to any kind of design, since we can see if the thought of our mind is good or not right away.

This project was definitely more challenging than I anticipated. I had to think of what would be a great representation of each word, and eventually I was able to express each word in a way I felt was sufficient. My approach consisted of me first drawing my expressive words on a piece of ordinary paper, and then transferring those to tracing paper. For each word, I used the Helvetica (sans serif) typeface, changing the sizes and direction of each letter as I saw fit. I learned that words could be expressed in a unique way by using a font, especially a simple font such as Helvetica. I was especially intrigued by the sample expressions when we visited the website that explained our assignment.

It was hard trying to come up with creative ways to express these five words. I did a Google search of “expressive words” and looked through some examples to gain some creative ideas. The words strict and romantic was the most hardest for me because I couldn’t think of ways to  express these two words by using the words itself. I searched the word ‘strict’ into Google and images of rulers kept coming up. So I made a ruler out of the word strict itself. As for the word ‘romantic’, I associated it with ring so I made the letter ‘o’ the ring in the word. With all the words i used the same typeface, Helvetica but with different font sizes and color.

This project really taught me how to express words by using font only. I never really thought of using words and font to get a message across so this is a new way of thinking.