Graphic Design week 1. Typography

Stationary - a state of motionlessness and in the States, writing materials. Our brief for graphics week one was to communicate the meaning of our given word using typography. Great, good, yes this seems clear enough. OH what a fool I was. First of all I misunderstood the brief and thought we were supposed to design a font, then I had to grapple with the actual state of being "stationary" as in possibly have been moving, but currently still, and also still capable of moving again. Its easy enough to show something is stopped dead or something about to move but neither of those two states are completely right.

We started off brainstorming and mind mapping, Patricia gave us an exercise using the S.C.A.M.P.E.R method to help us start thinking laterally. We drew up thumbnails to tease out our ideas. We were also asked to try and make a 3d piece to communicate our word.

To me, the idea of pens and pencils seemed like a much easier definition to convey so my two 2d pieces dealt with writing material:

Both of these pieces have problems in their communication, the first piece I feel, if it was saying a different word, I'm not sure if a viewer would read stationary, as opposed to paper clip, or metal or red! The second pieces problem is that it relies too heavily on the actual pieces of stationary stuck to it to communicate. It took me a while to understand this clearly and I think my results suffered!

 Ironically, as things often are, it was the more difficult definition that gave me the strongest piece. My 3d piece was the word stationary written in glitter and clear nail varnish on acetate. I then put the word inside a glass jar full of water and loose glitter, making a snow globe. When you shook it, the glitter swirled around the word, Stationary stayed stationary in the swirling environment! This piece got the best reaction and its the one I'm personally  most pleased with.

I really enjoyed the contextual study part of this project, Graphics is what I want for next year and I'm glad I'm getting to know famous designers to help build up my repertoire, Herb Lubalin and Bob Gill are two who I think I'll be coming back to.

So I'm a little disappointed with my mark for this week but I'll up my game for next week, the same thing happened with my first semester project, I got a bad review and it lit a fuse under me for the assessment! Fingers crossed I'll get it right next time!