Typography and Hypertextuality 2017

15th of Nov '17 - 29th of Nov '17 (Week 11-Week 13)
Jaslyn Tjhai (0333039)
Typography and Hypertextuality
Final Project: Kinetic Typography

Lectures

Lecture/Tutorials 11

15th of November 2017 (Week 11)

No lecture was conducted.

Lecture/Tutorials 12

22nd of November 2017 (Week 12)

Mr. Vinod started the class by giving us a lecture about cross alignment, alignments, indent, etc.
Cross Alignment is when you have two column of paragraphs but the lines are always parallel to each other, maintaining a cross alignment. Mr. Vinod also mention that your leading and paragraph spacing needs to be the same. Let's say your font size is 9, leading 12, then your paragraph spacing should be 12 or you can increase it to 24 for a bigger paragraph spacing. However, by doing so, it will not affect cross alignment.
Indent is when you start a line of text or position a block of text further from the margin than the main part of the text. Mr. Vinod explained that if we were to use indent, we have to make sure our paragraph is using the justified alignment otherwise you will create an uneven body of text. We were also told not to use indentation with paragraph spacing. There's also a hanging indent where the first line of the paragraph is extended over the main part of the text.

Fig. 1.a Indent (left) and hanging indent (right)

Widow is a short line of text left alone at the end of the column of text.
Orphan is a short line of text left alone at the start of the column of text.

Fig. 1.b An example of widow and orphan

In justified text, widow and orphan are considered more serious. The way to fix a paragraph that contains widow or orphan or even both is to reformat the text by adjusting the kerning of the letters or by increasing the number of words (widow).
To give emphasis to a word or phrase or a sentence, Mr. Vinod told us that it is okay to give emphasis in Italics is the number of lines is 5 or 10. When giving emphasis in Bold, if it's a body of text, select the entire paragraph and reduce the font size by 0.5. That is if the font is too bold. If you're going to give emphasis by changing the typeface, never use a serif if all your text is using serif, same thing with sans serif, never use a sans serif if you're typing using sans serif for the rest of your paragraph. Another thing you could also do to give emphasis is to create a highlight. When using highlight you need to decide whether you wanted to make the highlighted text a little indented so that it's in alignment with the text or you could make it not in alignment with the text.
Mr. Vinod also clarified to us the difference between symbols used for quotation marks and symbols used for inch/feet.

Fig. 1.c Difference between symbols

Head indicates a clear break between the topics within a section.
Subhead can be indicated by reduced seperation
Sub subhead  can be indicated by it being embedded in the body of text.

Fig. 1.d An example of head, subhead, and sub subhead

Lecture/Tutorial 13

29th of November 2017 (Week 13)

No lecture was conducted.

INSTRUCTIONS

FINAL PROJECT

Kinetic Typography

Requirements:

1. Adobe Illustrator CC 2017
2. Adobe Animate CC 2017
3. A4/Graph Paper

Instructions:

1. Look up for kinetic typography posters online as reference
2. Search for statements, dialogues, quotes, etc. that you want
3. Sketch out your ideas of the poster on an A4 or graph paper
4. Digitize your poster on Illustrator then animate it on Photoshop

Since the fonts that I designed are stencil fonts, I decided to either use the theme minimalistic or futuristic as those two are what's on my mind when I'm designing the font. For reference, I searched for a few posters.

Fig. 1.a Minimalistic References

Here are a few of my sketches.

Fig. 1.b Sketches

I tried to do a few poster before eventually deciding on one and working on a new one.

Fig. 1.c A few try on the poster

Then I decided to try working on this one which I also animated.

Fig. 1.d Fourth attempt

Fig. 1.e Animated version of my fourth attempt

However Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul said that the main focus of the poster is not strong enough, so Mr. Vinod suggested that since my font has a few parts missing, I should try to connect the parts and make it like a maze. I thought of this idea before but I didn't try it out. So here's my final attempt.

Fig. 1.f Final attempt on the poster

I can't really seem to make the gradient the same as the poster when I animated it in Adobe Animate. Here's the animated GIF.

Fig. 1.g Final animation of the poster

FEEDBACK

Week 12

When Mr. Vinod see my poster, he said that it was quite interesting. I then showed him my references, which he said are also very interesting. So he wanted me to try out something similar. But Mr. Vinod asked me to think about the composition first, as in how I will be placing my letters etc. I showed Mr. Shamsul what I did with my poster and Mr. Shamsul asked me to close all the attempts that I did so I can have other freash ideas that are different from what I’m doing. I was also asked why I did my text in layers which I don’t have the answer to. So Mr. Shamsul suggested that I should know what I wanted to tell and that maybe I can play around with a few alphabets in the poster.

Week 13

Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul checked my work and they said my animation was good but my layout was weak. They want me to make the point of interest of my poster a lot stronger before I add on the supporting parts of the poster. Mr. Vinod also told me that the way I place my numbers on the edge doesn’t complement my poster because I’m not doing an edgy poster. I showed Mr. Shamsul my work and he said that it’s too simple, he told me to add some shapes around to make it less empty. When I reworked again, I showed Mr. Vinod and Mr. Shamsul my work and they both told me to remove the shape at the bottom of my poster. Then I was asked to reduce the point size of the numbers and small alphabets. I was also asked to make a gradient since I have a gradient going on in my poster. 

REFLECTION

Experience

On week 12, I had to start thinking and working on my poster which is something that's always challenging for me even though I've already made quite a few posters for events before but it was alongside a partner so I have someone to help me out. On week 13, something I've already experience countless of times which is to work under pressure thinking about the few hours I had left to finish the poster.

Observation

On week 12, I observed that I'm always out of idea when it comes to thinking about an idea for a poster design. Thus, designing a poster is always a challenge for me. On week 13, I observed that I should really put in more effort on the idea of poster design and to do more research on poster designs which can be useful in the future.

Finding

On week 12, I found that we need to know what we wanted to convey before deciding how we should design our poster. We can have an idea first then think about how to make the idea work. On week 13, I found that designing a poster is something that we can always improve on which is why we should also take the initiative to read books, read articles online, or look for ideas or examples of posters that could inspire and give us new ideas for the posters that we will be designing in the future.

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Week 12

Tokyo TDC. Vol. 22 by AZUR CORPORATION

Fig. 2.a Front and back cover of the book

Tokyo TDC. Vol. 22 was the book I chose to read for week 12 as it contains a collection of works done by peculiar designers who share a special partiality required from design. It mostly contain poster designs by the designers which I thought would help me a lot in the third project where we will be doing kinetic typography by creating a poster design in which we have to animate afterwards. The first few pages consist of Prize Winning works. The work that won Special Prize is by Tsuguya Inoue which attracted my attention because they all look very interesting. It's creating animals from objects like smoke, light rays, etc. The font used for his poster is Helvetica Neue *86 Heavy Italic. Another one of the work that won the Special Prize is by Shin Sobue where his work is book cover design. It's also very interesting as he uses pixelated font for his book cover.

Fig. 2.b Works by Tsuguya Inoue

Fig. 2.c Works by Shin Sobue

Then there's this work by Mina Tabel which looks pretty interesting as it's very minimalistic and simple. Another one was by Ryota Sakae which is also a very minimalist poster. A poster by Tomohito Ushiro is also interesting where he also custom made a font for this poster. He uses blue cubes as the background but only some parts of the background. and the writings of the poster are arranged diagonally. 

Fig. 2.d (left to right) Works by Mina Tabel, Ryota Sakae, and Tomohito Ushiro

There are also type design works on pages 164 onwards. Then there's experimental works which looks interesting. 

Fig. 2.e Page 164

Another work caught my attention which is ANIMALFONT, where the alphabets are formed using balloons into an animal that forms a letter. So basically if you're looking for posters inspiration, this is a pretty good book for you.

Fig. 2.f Animalfont

Week 13

Type X: Typography, A Teaching Experience by Hernan Ordonez

Fig. 3.a Front and back cover of the book

The book that I decided to read on week 13 is a book called Type X: Typography, A Teaching Experience by Hernan Ordonez which contains the works of the students that he taught in classes and workshops from 2004 till 2010 in the Basque Country. 

Fig. 3.b Pictures of Hernan Ordonez's classes and workshop

The first work that caught my attention was a typographical poster of the type Bodoni. Another one was a typographical poster of the type Futura which looks pretty interesting. 

Fig. 3.c Typographical poster of the type Bodoni and Futura

Moving on to the next pages, I have arrived at the collection of personal logos by his students. The work by Bebe Espinosa caught my attention as she actually placed the letter 'e' inside of the letter 'b'. There's also one by Gabri Alonso which uses the shape of a quotation mark to make a personal logo which is very creative in my opinion. 

Fig. 3.d (right) Work by Bebe Espinosa

Fig. 3.e Work by Gabri Alonso

This book would also be perfect for anyone who's looking for inspiration for their work.

Fig. 3.f One of the works found in the book