Process and Production (year 2) - Physical Studio - I am... with Nick Deakin

This was the first session of physical studio for the year which is run by Nick Deakin; Whose work I have seen and been inspired by. For this task I had to come up with the end of a sentence with the beginning being 'I am', the whole phrase could only be 16 character which was one of the only guides we had, the rest of it was open to  being creative. Once we had thought of the phrase we then had to create a typeface; instead of jumping straight into creating them digitally we used the traditional pencil and paper to quickly get our ideas down. This allowed you to see what typefaces were working and what weren't so you could move on to something different without wasting your time using CAD. 

Firstly I wrote down as many phrases I could think of which I think best represented me or things that I wanted to be seen as. Then when I got a phrase I was happy with I moved on to creating type that would visual represent the phrase. I felt that it was important for the typeface to express the meaning of the phrase so this involve considering the shape, composition, style etc for it to be successful. 

These are the words/ phrases that I managed to come up with, these words just came straight from my head and for some of the words I used a thesaurus to get alternatives for some words as some words can be more interesting/ powerful than others. As Nick was walking round he noticed that I was indecisive with which phrase I wanted to choose and I had come up with 'I am a challenge' already so I thought this was interesting and well suited to myself. Also I like the idea of a challenge as it suggests that you will get a reward if you figure me out whereas if I were to say ' I am a nightmare' you may be put off of me and not want to come near me. 

These are the type faces I started to draw out into to the grid system; I tried to determine where I would place each individual letter before drawing the whole sentence out as I could have got half way through and realise it's not working and then have to redo it all. I quite liked these typefaces as they are bold and say 'look at me', also some of them look quite thick which to me gives the impression of a challenge to break.

These were done in my sketchbook just playing around with the style of the typeface and seeing if there was anything more suitable for the statement. However, I realised that I actually preferred the original outcomes that I had produced and wouldn't be taking these new ones forward. In these sketchbook styles I was trying to make the text a challenge to read so that it fitted with the statement; some I think worked better than others but I just saw it as development and that a good idea may come from these experiments. 

I chose to go back to the original typefaces that I drew out as I felt that these were more successful in comparison to the others I drew. This time I was trying to focus on how I could obscure the type so you could still see it but was more of a challenge to read. To do I tried different methods such as placing blank paper over the type, cutting the type up and creating folds in the paper. For this section of the workshop I used the scanner a bit so that I could keep the originals and so that I could rip up the scans for the purpose of obscuring the type. By using the scanner it opened up so many more options that I could trial. Out of all the different methods I think that the folding method worked quite well as you could still read the type but it was a challenge at the same time which is what I was trying to achieve. 

Overall as a session I found it challenging as typography isn't my strongest skill but I also enjoyed the freedom and creativity I could have within the session. Although I don't see myself as an expert in type it allowed me to try it out and learn that even if I sketch out bad ideas I can quickly move on to the next idea. I think for me the whole learning curve was working extensively just using a pencil and paper which I'm not used to as I usually jump straight to the computer. However, I've seen the benefits to working on paper such as you generate more ideas on paper than I would achieve on the computer, therefore I will try to use this process more in my practice and with studio work. The reason I think that the traditional method is so effective is that it allows you to eliminate any bad ideas in the initial stages instead of wasting time and energy on them; this method will develop me as a designer and make me more successful in the future.  Finally I have learnt that by using a grid system it helps you focus on one letter at a time, making each letter just as important as the last letter. Also by changing the style of the typeface can affect the message being expressed, therefore the style of the type links with the message/statement.