Wireframe Finals

I've added some defining borders either side of the text to help align the work with the title Modern or Post-Modern and the work now scrolls up from directly underneath the white separator, rather than at a distance from it. Nice.

Wireframe update

This is the one I've chosen. I've opted for a black and white timeline with a hint of color for the top half. This allows the artwork for the various people to really stand out.

Wireframe 3 updates

I've modified this design a little to incorporate some space for the information. I like the separation between the text heavy information and the timeline. Also, I think this design might be better as you get a clearer picture of what happened when and when things overlapped.

Wireframe 2 updates

Here's a look at what would happen if you clicked on something related to modernism, Massimo Vignelli for example:

or if you clicked on something related to post-modernism, say, Katherine McCoy:


As you can see I've represented both sides by the use of black and white. I'm choosing solid white and black backgrounds for now as I like the hierarchy. I may change that later on.

Bike Book

Here are a few sample pages from our team project. Dmitri, Carly and I put together a 16 page manual, size 8" x 5" on how to change a bike tire.

Cover

Diagrams with annotations

We photographed the bike and traced the images in Illustrator

We couldn't help but use some humor.

The specification for the piece was two color (any) which is a good idea to keep costs down. The paper is inexpensive too.

Type Designer Bio

Phil Baines is a British typographer currently working in England. Phil began not as a designer but as a catholic priest at Urshaw College in Durham. After his time studying there Phil turned to graphic design.

He graduated from St. Martin's School of Art in 1985 and two years later from the Royal College of Art in London.

Since completing his studies Phil has been a freelance graphic designer doing everything from print work for small publishers and art organizations to type sequences for TV commercials. Phil's work is characterized by very technical detail having a definite engineering feel throughout. He has completed editorial designs for clients such as Goethe-Institut, London, Matt's Gallery and Phaidon Press. He also teaches typography on the BA Honors graphic design course at the same school he graduated from.

More recently in the late 90s, he has been assisted by several ex students to take on larger commissioned projects otherwise impossible on his own.

One of his better known projects is the design of a type face called You Can Read Me for Fuse, a design magazine by Neville Brody. Phil is also the author of two books Ð Type & Typography with Andrew Haslam and Signs: Lettering in the Environment with Catherine Dixon.

Sources: myfonts.com & Identifont
Photo: esad.pt

A type experiment blog

A fellow classmate, Luke, and myself, have set up a blog dedicated to experiments in type design. You can view it here: http://t4experiment.blogspot.com/

My studio

Milly is my design buddy. She is the most nervous dog I know, but she teaches me a lot about myself, and other people, and life too. She has been designing with me for seven years now!

Some direction

The experimentation process is an interesting one. I've been looking at all these fantastic typefaces that people make, but where do they start?

Here's a bit of my process:
1. Research a specific area of type and find examples
2. Ask a load of questions related to how it might be made
3. Pick one
4. Ask deeper questions about that one question
5. Start playing

My question is:
1. How do additive and subtractive processes affect the shape of letterforms?

And deeper:
1. In what ways can I add?
2. In what ways can I subtract?

Here's a test. I took Karmina and for each letter subtracted the uppercase from its lowercase version:



In this one I overlaid the same letter, rotated it through 90 degrees and subtracted it from the letter behind. There are some nice formations in there.

I love that 's', it's got some nice geometric form to it, it smacks of the British flag...

I like some of the shapes that come out of this one. The letter is duplicated, rotated through 90 degrees and added. The o and the x are kinda cool, they retain their shape. Everything else looks like ancient symbols!

Fantastic schematic

I love this. I drew this back in February 08 for the IHOP-KC overview booklet. What a fun project that was.

Type Experiments

Once again, I don't know what I'm doing...



What would it mean for the viewer to have to build the letters? I know this has been done before but...



Type disappearing over time...





Typefaces in skin lines?


I think I'm asking the wrong questions. All my questions seem to make me want to create type and I can't get that idea out of my mind. Maybe I need to ask questions that won't necessarily result in immediate type creation. That's a good thing to say but how the heck do you come up with those questions? Where do you start?

Max's Ice Cream is happnin!

Here is the logo I made and below it is Pat making some ice cream before he goes on the road to Tuscon, AZ to a festival down there. He and his wife will be traveling this week to make and sell ice cream. The sample he made for us this time was awesome! Very soon they will have aprons and ball caps with the logo on them :)

Landing page

Here's a beginning layout for a website landing page:

Ten questions about making type

1. How can you make a font that disappears over time?
2. How would you make a font that becomes more readable over time?
3. How do you make a font that links together like a puzzle?
4. What would it take to make a font that the viewer would have to build?
5. How could you make a font that could only be sung?
6. How could you make a font that when you built it and put the letters in the right order it rewarded you?
7. What would make a font more readable only when it went round in circles?
8. How could you make a typographic accent (country)?
9. How can you make a font that only appears in shadow?
10. How can you make a font out of objects that only appear on the computer screen?

Or here are some others:

1. What would give type a sense of movement, so when you look at it you actually feel like you're moving?
2. How could you read a font one way, turn it through a number of degrees and it say something else?
3. Is it possible to make a font out of something natural that is very complex, like a snowflake for example?

Type Style

This typographic tendency is intriguing. The type seems to have a life of it's own. It's more than just flat shapes on a page. It has character, life and a desire to draw you into a story or another part you weren't expecting to show. In Type Design: Radical Innovations and Experimentation by Teal Triggs, Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) coined the phrase 'the medium is the message.' This is certainly true of this style of type where the objects used in the type design communicate a particular mood or feeling according to what they are or what they're made of.

In the examples below, each typeface is made from different objects. Some are 3D objects photographed and then digitized, others are hand drawn objects scanned into the computer and used that way.
Experimental, unusual type like this seems to be a post-modern thing 'located within the territory of the avante-garde, operating outside dominant traditions' (Type Design, Triggs, 7). As far back as 1959 'Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs were experimental in the way words and language were deconstructed to create a fragmentary non-linear approach to the contemporary narrative form' (Type Design, Triggs, 7).

Today many artists and designers seem to be using this style of type design to their advantage in selling products, marketing events and generally drawing greater attention to image and text than ever before. Type is no longer just words on a page, it's become art in and of itself. Ads have become more rich and tactile involving the viewer in a much more dynamic way. Type that is made from the subject that is being communicated seems to have more impact than just using say Times New Roman. A good example is the Psoriasis ad below.

Objects both natural and mechanical seem to have really engaging properties.

Eight wireframes

These are rough layout ideas for a website to present Modernism and Postmodernism.
My objectives in the presentation of these two movements is to:
1. find a way to see what part of each movement overlaps another part
2. see how everything lines up on a historical timeline




And here are the three I've chosen. These are illustrator wireframes:

Information Architecture Examples

An interesting time based info graph here:
http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/0906/trans0609largestbankruptcies.html

Michael Deal charts the Beatles authorship and collaboration with this really cool bar chart:
http://www.mikemake.com/#72772/Charting-the-Beatles

Here's an interesting spin on a pie chart:
http://www.good.is/post/transparency-the-change-in-carbon-emissions/

Harry Beck designed the London Underground map in 1933, a greatrepresentational info graph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TubeMapZ1_TFL.png

And just for fun, here's an interesting site where you can put in a website address and it will convert the architecture to an organic diagram:
http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/