Ideas and Final piece process
Our brief was to develop an outcome or a series of outcomes that places typography at the forefront and central to our practice.
Initial Ideas
I already knew I wanted to create something new instead of using my old work and I thought it would be a good opportunity to create some kind of type. I decided on creating posters quite early on but I found it difficult to know what to use as a ‘theme’ or a subject. I originally thought about doing something topical such as Global warming as I had come across some posters and typography which incorporated it into. Tal Shub and the team at Uno ( a climate-focused design company) have created the Great Grotesk typeface, which is based on Greta Thunburgs handwriting.
(Image: Tal Shub)
(Greta Grotesk :https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f6JdU9jG6J69mngi5-xYwbKXtCcnslJo/view)
(Article by Fast Company : https://www.fastcompany.com/90409174/theres-now-a-free-font-based-on-climate-strike-hero-greta-thunbergs-handwriting)
I also came across a few ice sculptures which related to the subject. I found an ice sculpture of Greta Thunberg and a campaign for a group of climate activists to carve Donald Trump into an arctic iceberg to illustrate the dangers of climate change by showing how long the sculpture will take to melt. (Article on the Donald Trump) iceberg sculpture: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-ice-sculpture-iceberg-climate-change-project-trumpmore-melting-arctic-a8331886.html)
The Great Thunberg ice sculpture was created by Alissa Khan-Whelan, Chris Godfrey and CJ Brown and put in Trafalgar Square which melted throughout the day to show be a representation of climate change unless change is made and to draw attention to a petition to have a permanent statue of Greta Thunberg in London.(Greta Thunberg ice sculpture :https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/greta-thunberg-ice-statue-miscellaneous-031019).
Another thing I came across after looking at websites ‘It’s Nice’ and Typographicposters.com is typographic illustrations. One which really caught my attention was a poster by Dominic Kesterton and Shun Sasaki which was illustrations of swimming pools in various shapes which were spelt out ‘Play’ In Japanese. I thought the idea was very clever and worked really well.
(Image by Dominic Kesterton and Shun Sasaki)
(Article about the Dominic Kesterton and Shun Sasaki, taken from Itsnicethat.com) work:https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/dropbox-paper-collaborative-poster-nicer-tuesdays-dominic-kesterton-shun-sasaki-260618)
Group tutorial & Planning
After my group tutorial, I decided against doing the subject of global warming and decided to not do a theme as there was little time to do deep research into a theme and Global Warming is a very topical at the moment which means it is also being covered by many people so to approach it from a new angle would be difficult especially without the time to research properly. I then didn’t really know what quotes to do after then but after looking at different websites and posters I found articles about mispronounced proverbs and sayings that mean the opposite to what we think they mean today. I.e the proverb “Blood is thicker than water” is actually “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” which is literally the opposite meaning to what we use it for today. I thought this would give me a good opportunity to experiment and get creative. I decided to incorporate digital type and handwritten type using the digital type as the quote we know and use today and then the handwritten type to show the old and forgotten part of the quote as it’s more of a traditional approach.
Inspiration
I had an idea of what I wanted my posters to look like but I also wanted a few ideas to inspire me and maybe help me think of things I hadn’t considered. I looked at a few websites for inspiration these were mainly:
Typographic Posters : https://www.typographicposters.com/posters
Pinterest: https://pin.it/eqvq5bwp3jo6wj
It’s Nice That : https://www.itsnicethat.com/
I created a moodboard with images I really liked and found useful which also matched the ideas I had in mind.
The three main things I was looking for were bold phrases which were predominant on the page, typographic illustrations and overlapping of colours. I wanted my poster to have overlapping colours as I like the way the colours change and create layered effects.
I also found a blog by Maddy Nye which really inspired my hand drawn types: https://www.yoursmadly.com/
The Process
Getting Started
To begin with, I wrote out different quotes I could use. I found quite a few but my favourites were “Curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back”, “The early bird catches the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese” and “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.
I sketched out a few rough ideas incorporating shapes and creating the text into a creative way such as in a circle or curved around the page or even flipped upside down to show the contrast of the second half of the quotes.
I kept sketching rough ideas until I came up with an idea I liked the look of.
I then looked for some typefaces I liked and worked out which ones would look best on which posters and which handwritten fonts went best with the digital typefaces. I then went on Adobe Illustrator and began to structure the digital part of the posters.
I created the hand lettering words with pen apart from the “an eye for an eye poster’ which was created with ink and a brush.
I scanned in the letters and words in and traced the images so I could adjust parts of them that were wonky or didn’t look right, to make the letters look neater and cohesive.
Although I tidied up the ‘But the second mouse gets the cheese’ a little too much as it looks a bit more digitised than I had hoped for.
Type
I tried out different typefaces to see which worked best together and hand drew one half for each poster. I drew them out with a marker pen and then adjusted them on Illustrator.
For the first posters, I decided on using sans serif fonts to keep the top half modern and paired them with a cursive fonts and a bold handwritten fonts to show a more traditional approach.
Colours and shapes
I wanted the colours to layer over each other and so I wanted colours that would complement each other. I experimented with colours using highlighters as I knew I wanted to use bright colours. I saw which worked best with each other and also created a strong contrast when they were mixed. I decided on pink,blue and purple, yellow, green and blue and orange, yellow and pink.
To figure out which shapes and background layers I needed I experimented a bit on Illustrator to try out different ideas and came up with these ideas :
I also visualised these through using the lightbox in the print studio after I had created the stencil on newsprint paper.
Printing
I had a screen printed and exposed a screen before but I wasn’t fully confident in doing it myself as I couldn’t remember the steps fully. Nigel the print technician gave me another induction which was very useful as now I feel like I’ll be able to expose a screen by myself for future projects.
After coating and exposing the screens I cut out paper stencils for the other screens and began to print the 1st colour layers, I then continued this with the second layer and then added the exposed screen prints on top of the page.
One of the base layers went wrong so I had to begin again but then they turned out even better after I remade the stencil and used a bigger screen.
After printing, I cut down the paper to A3.
The Outcome
I’m really happy with how the posters turned out. I think the bright colours work well with each other and really pop and helps them be eye-catching. One of the things I was worried about was if they’d be legible or if they’d be too busy but I think they work really well and are clearer than I thought they would be.
Catherine's learning journal 