CONTENTS1 2

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Distinctive Characters: Typogra-phy as a Semiotic Resource

Pg: 3-10

Lectures and Workshops Pg- 33-38

:Chromophilia - 35:Silk Screen - 36:Transmedia - 37:Propaganda - 38

PostcardPg: 11-16

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CONTENTS3 4

Letters in the Landscape: A lexicon of urban typography

Pg:16-28

Exibition: For the Love of GraphicsPg:27-32

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1Distinctive Charaters:

Typography as a semiotic Resourse

Working in groups of two choose an initial letter from the following set and based on the terminologies and glossaries contained withing the brief develop a word that is related to the unit-you can produce it in Caps or lowercase. After careful planning design and make a three dimensioinal initial character that communicates it’s meaning. The model can be made of found objects

but must finally be wall-mounted.

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Typography can be used as a powerful vehicle to transmit ideas and notions of culture, gender, history, materiality and value. The function of typography is to communicate a message so that it effectively coveys and reinforces meaning. In the early 20th century Beatrice warde in The Crystal Goblet ascertained that typography should render itself invisible and be subservient to the content. In the 21st Centu-ry digital intervention has allowed greater access to typographic technilogies and no longer is typogra-phy judged on it’s ability to remain withing these con-strained vessels. Typogra-phy as a semiotic resource in it’s own right is capable of transmitting a variety of meanings.

The study of semiotics has been used by academics to analyse and deconstruct Post Structuralist Theories. If we look at the work of the Semiotics Alliance on http://www.semiotics.co.uk we can see how semiotics are used withing the commer-cial sector to help some of the world’s biggest brands find fame and fortune.

If we go further back in the history to the Middle Ages we see how religious and secular texts use illuminated Characters to accentuate meaning and establish hierarchical construction. The use of colour to provide particular emphasis and meaning to the texts.

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KIn a group of two, we had to choose a letter out of 26 alphabets in random and I handpicked ‘K’ but we had a chance to exchange it with my class mates, if we wanted to try something else. But Kasia and myself, she was the person I was working with and we both agreed on the chosen letter. But the brief had few restriction, we werent allowed to create anything above 300mm high.

KissKnifeKettleKeyKit

KindKidneyKeenKite

Kebab

KickKen

KeypadKid

Keyring

KetchupKill

KneeKidnapped

Knot

Here are the few words i brainstormed that starts with the letter K:

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KIT Idea 1

For this idea, Kasia and myself, we both had an idea of creating a body shaped as “K’ and maybe dress it up with litle tiny football kit or maybe just draw the kit on the body. The ‘K’ body would have been probably made by wood while using laser cutter to cut it into the shape. When we sketched it to see how it will look like or either if it would work, it also gave the sense of Kicking aswell. It communicated 2 things with one whereas we only wanted it to communi-cate one, but we ventured on using the idea of Kick aswell, where the ball will be hanging giving the idea of the ball being ‘kicked’.

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Idea 2

For this idea, we both deided to go for something simple such as knot. there are various things that gets knotted, so we researched the things that gets knotted often, such obviously your headphones which I’m sure everyone has experienced, shoe lace, some sort of string, ropes or even hair.

KNOT

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Types of Materials

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After we looked online and re-searched and we thought maybe we should just go for something orginal f we are creating a “Knot” such as using rope. We also got past some visually interesting way to knot but again we thought knotting is just natural it hapens it self, even though we are kind of making a knot but we were trying to be less focussed on the way the knot looks. So, using thick rope was a simple idea and we made a small string prototype first and asked our class mates, and we got the right results so, took it further into using thicker rope.

ROPE

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PROTOTYPE

After we did our test on a small string and made it into the shape of ‘K’, it was quite easy to make it and it gave the K shape. We added few knots around the hands and legs of K to of course communicate

the term “knot“. After that was done, we didnt know what difficulties we had to face for trying the proper big thick rope. First of all, finding the rope was a hard task, we went to all the shops that possibly sold

ropes but we didnt had much luck finding it. We even went to a pet store, and looked at dogs toys that had thick rope with a ball but the colour was a dissapointment, it included all the colours thats in a rainbow in all

the ropes, whereas we wanted something plain and simple. We then got the idea of rope that holds the curtains and decided to use those-which we found it in a small home store nearby university.

The Final 3D Character

It was quite easy to put this rope into a shape of ‘K’, and the big knots makes

it more clear of the term “Knot.” To add a little style, we took threads out from

the rope and spreaded it out. Using the black background, it really enhances

the shape of the rope and stands out. The 3D Rope can be found at Kasia’s

box.

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2Postcard

Produce an A6 postcard with the image on one side and the brief description of

word on the other.

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Initial Designs

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These are designs for the Post-card, looking at the layouts and where the quote would sit on a black background.

Contact Sheet

Out of hundreds photos, I have chosen these 6 photos that represents differences in it’s exposure, colour balance, lighting.

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Quote“The importance of typogra-phy in design can’t be overes-timated. Knotting the accura-cy, precision, and balance of geometric forms together can give letters the elegance and sharpness they deserve”- Smashing magazine

Layouts

i chose this image as it had a good lighting and it was on better focus which icluded more details of the rope. I edited, cleaned a bit on photoshop. One of the layout has a slanted style which I really like, it

gives a slight edgy style to the post-card and even if it’s a got a little bit of rope cropped out i think it still gives the visual it’s justice.The other one on the right, it just car-ries a simple style to it.

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The Final Postcard

The Final Postcard can be found in Kasia’s box.17

The Importa

nce of typography in

design can not b

e overestimated.

Knotting the accuracy, p

recision

and balance of geometric

s

formed together c

an give

letters the elegance and

sharpness they d

eserve.

3Vernacular Letterforms:

Mapping the Landscape - A lexicon of urban typography

This Initial brief begins with a visit to poole where you will identify, collect and photograph, examples of

vernacular letterforms in the town. Your images could be literal interpretation of details of road signs, grave-stones or shopfront signs, etc or slightly more chal-lenging abstract collection of ‘hidden signs’ drawn

from architectural forms, found objects and uninten-tional typographic structures.

It is important that you keep accurate notes for each pictures: ie Photographer, Location, Date, Description before returning to AUB and uploading your pictures

to hard drive.You will then go through a process of picture editing

and retouching in readiness to prepare layouts for the book they will be published in.

Technical Specification:Trimmed size : 300 * 300

Four colour

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Poole Quays

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Before we were all set to go Poole Quays, we were to form in a group including 4 people which were Conor Kelly, Nis-chal Gurung, Harriet Salmon and of course myself. We then got on a bus from university bus stop and headed straight to the quays, and it was a bright day so it was a good day to pictures but it was quite cold. Also, we were given a small digital camera to take pictures on, which delivered quite decent quality pictures. After we got there, we all worked together and just tried to capture anything that you see has typographic character to it ranging from A-Z.

The Poole Yacht Club

Contact Sheet

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Contact Sheet

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Contact Sheet

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Book BindingBinding book with threads or strings which I had already learned before but I am definetely new to the scene if binding it with glue and using the wooden machine called ‘Lumbeck Press’.First of all we carefully chose the right images out of hun-dreds of images and played around with the layouts for the book in Indesign soft-ware in our groups. after that it was sent to print and printed on A4 paper and we used the bone tool to create a smooth fold on the paper. Then we used the Press ma-chine to hold all the pages together and tightened it while also checking if all the pages are on the same equal level. On the top then we ap-plied thick PVA glue and left it dry for 15 mintes. After 15 minutes we reappy the glue again and later we apply a strip of mull on the spine of the book and add glue on top one more time and we left it to dry over night. We returned next day and it was the last finishing up left to do, we stuck the cover of the book and cut extra unwanted bits of paper and it was com-pleted with a pristine clean finish.

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The Final book can be found at Conor’s box.

Urban Typography Book

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Urban Typography Book

Urban Typography Book

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4Exibition: For The Love Of

Graphics

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For this project, We hosted a small ex-ibition on Monday 17th of Febraury in our studio open for everyone who are interested and each of us had to bring an

item to showcase it on the exibitioin. The event was organised by small team and it was well exibited even in a very short period of time. It was interesting to

see what everyone had brought and also seeing all the amount of stuff from glass bottles to vin-tage designed tins to books etc, it was good to see the the

different style of art and designs from different corners. Also, seeing all the different styles from different time scale i’m kind of interest-ing what the future

holds, what more is there still to come.For the exibition, I brought 2 packet of twinings tea, but it wasn’t no ordinary tea. It had fruity flavoured in it which

were Blackcurrent, Rasberry and Drag-on fruit. I got this when I was shopping at asda and just saw a tea with ever so coll packaging that caught my eye and i

thought i had to get it for the exibition and also for me to try it if it actually taste like the way the pack-aging is visualising it. The packaging was surrounded

by elegant clean cursine design that enhanced it’s look of flourshing fruity tea.

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Lectures

Work Shops

Chromopholia

Colour is one of the fundamental ele-ments of communi-cation available to an artist or a designer. In nature we see it a number of diverse ways: as display, for camouflage, as a warning. colour has psychological as-pect too. that is our perception of colour relates to the different wavelength of light that surfaces absorb and reflect, and the way this wavelength is registered on our retina. This affects our experience as for example, red is not only different from blue, it strikes the retina more aggres-sively and therefore carries this impli-catiion. Colour can commu-

nicated by means of association also. For example, purple has become linked to the notion of luxury goods from Far east during the 19th cen-tury, many of which were coloured in the unfamiliar (to the western eyes) and exotic colour purple. Colour can denote a particular period of time. A range of browns might make us think of 1950’s when rationing was prevalent, and camo-flauge browns and brown greens were cheap source of pigment for wallpa-per manufacturers. This was because the Ministry of defence were selling off he surplus tha had been produced for the war

effort.Also, colour can be used expressively. For example, strong clases of highly saturated col-our might communicate ideas of energy, dance, vitality, and hedonism, whereas a grouping of delicate, shifting blues might talk about calm and quietude.Through practice and discussion we ar going to explore how colours interact, and increase your alertness to how colour might be exploit-ed strategically in order to articulate your ideas more successfully.

For this workshop, I was to create just a random abstract looking typography. I drew a grid first and I just wrote big typog-raphy such ‘A’, ‘T’, ‘V’ and ‘R’ kind of laying each texts on eacho-ther but not literally all of it on top but just its parts. I was to use very light soft cool colours, so I had mix lots of colours with white colour. and just paint in all the boxes. But i couldnt finish in time because im such a slow worker when it comes to paint and im not real-ly a big fan of painit-ng but i enjoyed the workshops. After the i didnt had enough time, I scraped all the excess paint and dried the rest.

Colour terminilogy

Primaries; Secondary, TertiaryComplimanetaries; simaltaneous contrastChromatic; AchromaticValueSaturationTints; Tones; ShadesWarm and CoolMineral, Vegetable, Animal pigment sourcesPigment, Oil, Acrylic, WatercoloursExtended, Limited, analogous palettesColour proportion

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Screen Printing

From my experience, I have only heard of the term but never actually got to use it. That is why I decided to take on the workshop.the image above is my example of the silk screen printing. That’s right, I actually got to print something.The technician grad-ually showed us how to do it by oiling the paper whatever you want to print and later sprayed water on it and dried for about 5 minutes and after exposed to a big light

box for a minute or so and added it to the screen. we then squeezed ink and pressed by a wood piece on to the paper you like whcih got me the result which you can see on the image above. I thought it was quite easy to do but the process to do it took forever and I imagined especially when its busy and theres lots of students in class it would be hard to do and even could take longer but i enjoyed it.

Silk-Screen

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Lecture Notes

Monomedia-The book, Spoke, Word, the image, ie traditional Media forms.Interpretation/Adapta-tion-Remaking one media production into another. i.e. Book to Film.Multimedia-Combination of mediums working to-gether.

The concept of transme-dia - Commercial-Storytell-ing.Transmedia-Different channels of communica-tion in telling you story in one way. Eg: Matrix, comic films, animation and games.

There are other ways such as MonoMedia- Books, Images, Music, by hear-ing.

The lecture shows the concept of transmedia ans it’s applicatiion to a range of visual and media practices. it examines the ways of in which the termis current-ly defined and used by a range of contemporary theorist, and how the concept builds upon previous notioins such as intertexuality, remix concept of the guten-burg parenthesis which seeks to examine the extent to which con-temporary cultural and media practices can be seen to be reverting to a pregutenberg form in which relationships between textual objects become more fluid, and notions of ownerships and defined authorship start to break down.

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What is it, Why it exists and how it operates through consideration of historica and in particular contem-porary examples from across a range of dynam-ic, dramatic and diverse contexts and channels of communication. the sesion exam-ines key issues - notions of mass manipulation, spin, persuasion and control - in relation to propaganda exampls includ-ing visual, audio, aerial example, digital and guerel-la methods.This provacative ses-sion will question

how we encounter propaganda today including animal rights, political campaigns, war reporter and news stories. The ses-sion will question the role of social media in contem-porary propagan-da experiences.

This lectures was probably the one i benifited the most from, as already got knowledge from this lecture to use on my essay, so that was a good thing. From this lecture I got fair understanding of the term Propa-ganda and how it’s still used now and it has been used since a while since world war from television, poster, advertisement etc.

Well Known example of propaganda

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ByNawal Gurung