Mike and Types.

     Ok, so really quick because it's late and I'm sick now apparently (oh yippee) here are the three sets of hand made typefaces.  I tried my best to follow my own set rule when designing them, such as what serifs looked like and where line weight was a certain size and angle.  Shooting on the light table was a mistake though because the lighting actually made the paper hard to edit out, and you can still see the grid a little bit.

Just A Little Update.

     Just going to throw up the first few of the color study photos I've taken to show the direction I'm heading in.  Essentially I'm painting fruit with different harmonies that relate to the fruit's original color, and photographing them together.  The background I felt was too distracting so I've been shooting them on the light table to light them from top to bottom.

Color Emotion?

     Wow, I never would have figured thinking of emotions for these colors would be so hard.  Some weren't so bad but others like orange... all I could think about were oranges and other physical associations.  Either way here they are.

     For this part  of the color emotions project I had some difficulty coming up with new exiting names for these colors.  Many of them ended up being silly or very obvious.  I blame it on by lack of word association skill.

Helvetica (Oh Yeah).

     So Helvetica... best font ever.  I know that this is just my subjective opinion (even if its right) but it is really such a versatile typeface.  Helvetica took me out of a dark place full of grunge fonts and stencil fonts and grunge stencil fonts.
     Watching the documentary Helvetica really just reinforces why I enjoy it so much.  I love the way it takes you through the modern visual landscape of todays cities and how it permeates so many aspects of our culture.  The fact that they point out is for however widespread its use is because we see it everyday it becomes installed in our brains as this normal functioning thing.  This is what makes it such an automatically accepted universal font.  
     The other part of the documentary that I enjoyed was seeing the people, who do not like the font or fervently hate it, try and justify there reasons.  I suppose most particularly expressive designers feel the same way, but seeing people attribute it to big business, "right wing propaganda", and conformity drives me up the wall.  At that point lets face it, it's not Helvetica thats the problem is it?

Weapon of Mass Production (not really).

     So its very late/very early and I'm listening to the news and have the air blasting on hi just to keep me awake enough to write this blog post.  I've completed my book finally and I feel very good about how it turned out.  It's almost everything I could have hoped for given the parameters.
     The dot compositions prove that relations between elements in a composition such as scale, position, layers, and color hierarchy, can really elude to abstract words and concepts.  Effectively used, there is often no need to enforce the image with explanatory text, but put together as abstract metaphors they can communicate very strongly and be aestheticly pleasing.
     The image material I chose effectively backs up my concept of health and mental degeneration with its many worsening side effects.  I included various medical related images such as photos of microscopic images of the body.  Along with the page bases which are medical diagrams and terminology, the cover looks as though it is a medical file.  The facial imagery is there to keep the view of the topic grounded in the individual.  Those faces are blurred and obstructed to keep the imagery abstract and also give the feeling of loss and confusion that mental degeneration would convey on a first person level.  The background text and image is there to provide order and also give an uneasy feeling similar to seeing one's own medical chart and not knowing how to read or understand it.  There are several serendipitous  moments throughout the book, and the text and image work very well together as a whole.  Having both elements there to support each other definitely helps to further communication even with abstract concepts.
     The font I chose was Monotype Grotesque.  I feel that using this font was a good choice because it is very clean and not distracting but at the same time it can hold its own in the composition.  It also carries the fluctuating relationship between organic and mechanical forms.
     One of the things I would have liked to have improved on would be to not accidentally punch binder holes into the wrong side of one of my final pages.  I did however re-back the page and fill the holes as best I could.  Also I would have liked to have made better use of the much more precise tools available in the digital realm for preparatory work.

Functioning- employs repetition through the continuation of the forms moving across the composition

Regressive- employs compound shapes that become less complex from left to right

Degenerate- employs alignment that sets up order which is then dismantled

Erode- employs compound shape in the middle form and alignment in the forms below it

Disoriented- employs continuation in the dots that form a continuous path that swirls around from the center

Irrational- employs scale (if anything) with different sizes of dots moving about in a semi-haphazard way

Dissociative- employs correspondence in the relationship between the larger dot and the smaller ones that represent the sliced portions

Unfamiliarity- employs positive/negative play with the smaller dots forming dots themselves 

Dysfunctional- employs repetition from left to right and then breaks it with the third form