George Eccles

Now I began to research into Typography and it’s definition. I also looked into aspects of typography such as: x-height, different types of fonts and type faces, ascenders and descenders and other aspects. I then began to look at famous typographers from the past and which fonts they created. I also looked at their history and past jobs etc.

Firstly, I wrote down my research on some paper and there wasn’t much information for each typographer. To improve on my research I created a Powerpoint around typography and the typographers I looked in to. I did some more in depth research for each slide and added more information about typography and the advanced terms surrounding it. I also did more research about my chosen typographers and I added which fonts they designed, where they have worked in the past and some of their general past.

To start my project I began to do some research on typography and some existing typography posters. This was to try and get an idea of how they can look and also to get some inspiration for my own ideas. To get all of this research together I created a spider diagram which has all of my initial ideas about: backgrounds, ways to present the text and different techniques I can use to create my poster.

One of the ideas I thought about was photography. During my first week I went out and took pictures of random places around Blackburn and the first idea I had in my head for the posters was to use a forest or relaxing background. I then thought I could add the word Typography somewhere to the poster. I thought this would make the text stand out because it looks out of place from the background. After researching some typography posters I got the idea for using paper cutouts and arranging them to spell words. I also liked the shadow you got from the paper if it was raised from the canvas. Finally I researched paint and existing typography posters where they have used paint to get certain effects. I thought about using a stencil or cutouts then painting around them and leaving the inside of the paint blank.

I chose which spray can I was going to re-design and I picked one named atmosphere. The colour for this spray can was a light blue. I started by creating a mind map based around atmosphere and came up with ideas for the background, sticker and colours. I was thinking that a space or sky background would go well with the atmosphere name and also the light blue colour.

To expand on my design ideas I sketched 8 design ideas for my spray can based off of line, tone, shape and texture. The second design were much harder to come up with compared to the first designs. I created the designs in black and white and the texture designs were created with the intention to be scanned in and used with my final designs.

To start off units 1+4 I made some mind maps to create some initial ideas for my project. I started with a mind map based around materials which I can use for my design. I then created a mind map for famous artists and what type of art they created. I just included the most famous artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Pablo Picasso. The final mind map I created was for processes. This is how I could use the materials I mentioned before to create effects and designs. For example, using paint and sponges to get a texture and scanning this in to edit and use in Photoshop.