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ARTS 246 Blog 10 (3/26)

Online Tutorial:

This week I decided to watch more YouTube videos on layouts to give me an edge on the Process Book. I watched "Principles of Layout" series from Flux Academy on YouTube. It was helpful to for me to keep in mind of these principles when placing elements like text and images on my spreads. I believe I should focus on focal point in my spreads to make sure the most important element in my spreads is highlighted to the viewer's eyes. Hierarchy is another thing I need to keep in mind, able to move the viewer's eyes from the project name to the text, and to the images. I will also try not to separate elements that go together, like images from the same project, by grouping them. Finally, I also want to play around with scale, like maybe scaling up my images sometimes or make them bleed on the spread. The examples shown in the series like the real life websites and spreads was also helpful in understanding the discussed principles. This video help me to understand what I should keep in mind when laying out and putting elements on my process book.

Process:

On the weekend, I gathered all the text and images of projects that I was going to cover. I slightly adjusted and brought in the margins that Blurb given. My grids is 8 columns by 10 rows so I can put my elements in more ways than if I had bigger modules. I finished up my layout of my introduction, table of contents, and my Remaking Language Project spreads in class Monday. Rest of the day on Monday was to write my statement of intent for the program, which I barely finished it. Tuesday, I wrote an overview for Remaking Language project since I didn't have any text from my blog posts in ARTS 245 that talked about the project in detail. In my spreads I try to keep in mind to have some whitespace and also aligning the elements together. For the process book, I planned to just cover the Remaking Language and American Sports Design from ARTS 245 and the Soda City Market Poster and the Mindful Design Poster in ARTS 246, because I feel great on other projects that I did in ARTS 245 like the Nine Square Project. It was until Marius today recommend everyone to cover all your projects int ARTS 245 & 246, because you get a better chance of getting in. Marius said if you don't feel good about the project, tell why in the process book and what would you change. So I plan to cover every Typographic Design projects I did this school year in my process book. I also read in the project sheet that the readings that we did, should be included as well. I will include them as well but I will focus on the projects first.

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ARTS 246 Blog 9

Online Tutorial:

For this week's online tutorial I choose to talk about "7 Advanced Tips For Layout & Composition In Graphic Design" by Typefool on YouTube. I like this video as it reminds me what I really need when going towards creating my new process book for ARTS 245 & 246. I wanted some advice of sketching out layouts and composition, and this video pop through. Typefool's advice for layouts is trying to make new ones, "break from the routine", make layouts that is unique and doesn't follow any current trends, pushing through boundaries. I felt this statement was very inspiring that creating layouts is just experimenting, not replicating. For the process book, I am thinking about having more columns and rows for my grids so I won't be limited by larger modules, I usually do like 6 columns and 8 rows. I am somewhat nervous about the Process Book, but this video help me gain some confidence.

Process:

Since last blog post, I had to put my traced poster sketch on tracing paper into Photoshop and turn it to grayscale. I needed to do this to clean up parts of the poster that should not be on the poster, this would make image tracing on Illustrator more simpler. When I cleaned up and image traced the new silhouette and type, I clean it some more but not to much, to give that human and non-digital form on the type. I add the colors back into my text and refine my color choices and continue my work on Photoshop. I gave the silhouette a dark blue outline and a yellow bolder outline to create visual interest in the silhouette and also give the feeling of wellness with the yellow outline. The background of the poster is from a polyester shirt that I have, to draw connection to yoga with the polyester being used in most yoga clothing. I used gradient map to get the blue of the polyester texture. There is a paper texture that I added on to my poster to give a little sense of craftiness and clean texture on to my poster. Also, I added a displacement map on my poster so that the lines and edges of my work are not too smooth. This was to make the poster look less digital and more like a print, and connecting to my type that is not smooth at all. We had a visiting artist, Nicole Album, that critiqued our work on Monday. For my poster, she said to change the green on Mindful and Mind to a different color since it is less readable than other words in different color and that "OF" should not be emphasized since it was not important, she told me to scale it down and move the rest of my type around. I did not feel like scaling down "OF" and move my type again, since I like where the words are and I didn't have enough time to do all that. I decided to replace the word "OF" to "FOR", so I will be still using the letters that still have, but have to design the R from scratch. The replacement color for Mindful and Mind was a light pink, since it would be the only color that would contrast well with the silhouette. I did not choose red because that draws too much attention to Mindful and Mind. I only changed Mindful to this pink since I felt colors of pink, creme, and orange felt very bland and dull, but I didn't want to do green for Mindful either since it doesn't read well. Since Mind was able to read well where it was at, it was green, and for Mindful to be readable, it was pink. I felt that this make the poster more visually interesting with the diverse colors.

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ARTS 246 Blog 8

Online Tutorial:

This week I watched "Texture & Grunge Essentials | Photoshop Tutorial with Free Textures" from TextureLabs on YouTube. I chose this since I have never look to much into textures or how to use them effectively, so this video would be a good introduction for me to understand texture a little. I know how to use clipping mask since I used them a lot during Illustration I. I never played with levels much before until the Soda City Market Poster, but I still don't completely know how they work. I know about masks too, but never thought about using texture to have the effect that the text is wearing off on the background layer below it. Even when using colored texture for the mask, it would convert it into grayscale which is very cool. The most helpful and amazing part of the video is the Blend If Tool on Blending Options, it is very cool to see, making the text look like it was on a bumpy stone texture below it. This would been help when I was creating mockups for a WNBA logo I did in Typographic Design I last semester, specially having the logo on the sports jersey.

Process:

I looked for some old yoga illustrations at the Thomas Cooper Library, which I didn't have any luck finding any illustrations. The books that I found is just yoga performed by real life people, I didn't check out any of them. I decide to look into the Internet Archive website to see if I could find old yoga illustrations, unfortunately I didn't find any. So settled for a woman doing the lunge yoga pose in one of the yoga books I found on Internet Archive as the silhouette that my text will be in for my poster. I hoped I was able to stack my type in a similar way like my sketches but that is impossible with the constraints of the silhouette I got. Then, I messed around with envelope warp to have the text fit in the silhouette, I manually warp one letter, it looked bad and I didn't want to manually warp each individual letters. I searched YouTube to see if there is a faster and easier way to fit text into a shape, I watched one with the person cut his shapes horizontally for each line of text to be in and used the shape as the envelope warp for the text. YouTube is such an useful tool. I warped all my text into the silhouette, I noticed the text kind of look like a yoga outfit, something unintentional that adds more to my design. On Monday, Marius suggested to me to use tracing paper to trace my letters to fix some of the shape of some of the letters up. I traced my letters and digitalize couple of my type, Marius gave me three new suggestions to help me. One was to continue digitalizing my type, two was to borrow a Wacom tablet from the Media Service since I used my laptop trackpad to draw the type, and the final suggestion was to just scan in a hand-traced version of my poster with tracing paper. He told me about James Victore, who uses hand-drawn type, the argument of his letters from digital type, is that Victore's is human with textures and imperfections, making it more unique and eye-catching than plain digital type. I would agree that my digital type on my poster is throwing me off in some way, like there is something that could be added. I think the scanned hand-traced poster would be appealing. I traced my entire poster that I print out on Monday with four pieces of tracing paper taped together.

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ARTS 245 Blog 7

Video:

I found Netflix's episode of Paula Scher as really good. Her story of how she became a designer and her work was very interesting to watch. She became a designer while she didn't have any artist models in her family and her father thinking that art is stupid, it would been tough for her mentally. When Scher showed two paintings that she did to her father before he died, he said that Scher was not crazy and he never did anything that creative. That part hit me, Scher being embarrassed of her paintings because her dad thought art is stupid in the past, but in his deathbed he thought what Scher has done was creative, and he would never able to replicate it. Her father made a device that made maps more precise, but he still found her daughter's art being creative, he definitely was proud of her. Outside of that, her work process is interesting too, she sketch her ideas down and get help from her design cooperative to get her ideas into fruition. Also, what she said about type in this episode gave me new perspective.

Process:

I finished my Soda City Market Poster last Friday. Friday, I was playing around with halftones and gradient maps to have a background for my poster that is noticeable but doesn't make the type illegible or too distracting. I found if I just put into the halftones as the background, the text I have for my poster would be illegible. Then, I wonder if I could make the halftones less prominent, in which I did gaussian blur to blur and give contrast between the type and the background. Then I watch some more YouTube videos on halftones, one video had noise to the image first before doing the halftone. So I did that, I picked the dust and scratch option of the noise filter since I felt it looked good on my background photo. So I ended up adding noise, halftone, and gaussian blur to produce a blurry pixelated effect on the background. I felt my poster turned up pretty nice and I am happy with it.

For project 3, "Mindful Design" was our prompt. I did research on mindful design and definitions on mindfulness. I found that mindful means that you are aware of possible options and mindful design make users aware of these options but let the users have free will on what they decide. For my sketches, my key words were control, self, mind, your, and aware. I felt those keywords have the ideas of the definition of mindful. I end up using the quote, "Be Mindful of Your Mind & Self", since it is a simple quote and get the definition of mindfulness across. I am trying to fit the text into a silhouette of a person doing a yoga pose, an activity associated with mindfulness.

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ARTS 246 Blog 6

Reading:

This week, we had to read a Communication Arts magazine and its like $10 dollars to buy. I ended up buying Interactive Annual 31 since it was the latest issue, I kind of wished I got the Typography Annual or the Design Annual, since Interactive is more for websites and digital design. The first article was about Motion Sickness, an ad campaign company that covers serious issues in a fun way. The first two paragraphs of the article talked about an ad that talked about how explicit content on the internet ruins children perception of real life relationships with a funny skit, really caught my attention. The other interesting article was about a type design, Tien-Min Liao. What I found interesting about her is her typefaces, like they look so fun and playful. Her work process and how she refine her type is good to read too. The most impressive thing about her is that she does bi-script lettering for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean too, since those languages have a lot of characters and glyphs. Those are the only articles that I fully read, all the others I scanned through. But all the illustration, designs, and type in this magazine are very good, very inspiring. I would look through this again in the future to be inspired.

Process:

On Saturday, I went to Soda City Market to take some pictures that I could put on my poster. I decided to screen my picture on the light blue background of my poster and lower the opacity so the text on top of it is visible. For critique on Monday, I was told to move all my elements to the right a bit, so that my margins are equal on the left and on right. I was also told by Marius that I should have my background to be a flat solid color or get a better picture to be screened as the background. I put a new photo for my poster that looked more visually pleasing, and also adjust the elements of my poster. I was also told in the critique to up the saturation of my poster, which I adjusted my poster's saturation in Photoshop, making the colors more vibrant but it did make the background photo less visible. I also played around with the hue of my poster on Photoshop, I found two themes for the poster when I played with, there was one was Halloween color palette and one with a cherry blossom/spring feel to it. The only problems with these themed posters is that there is a slight white stroke around my logotype, which I was not happy about. For the final critique, I was told by Marius that I improved with every critique I gotten, my poster composition worked well, and there was a hierarchy. The thing that I could adjust was the background, making it a flat color or not. A classmate, Isaac Fernald, suggested me to have a gradient map for my background that could fix my poster, and he taught how to apply a gradient map after class. I still need play around with the gradient map and maybe add some halftones.

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ARTS 246 Blog 5

Reading:

This week's reading goes into creating grids which relates to what we did last week, when we were making our grids and layouts. Calling the grid as areas on a playing field is an unique analogy, as both are good ways to organize your game plan. I didn't there was science and proportion that goes into manuscript grids, I thought I was a simple textbox floating in whitespace. In the modular grid section of the reading, it said that the rectangular modules are rarely perfect squares. I wonder if modular grids should have approximately square modules, since I have been making my modular grids to be approximately square than rectangular recently. Ramos' modular grid in the example is interesting to me, as how does she is able to have the text constraint into the modules perfectly, the text need to be long enough and also tracking with tweeking the font size is a lot of work to make it fit the modules. The baseline grid would be very helpful for me when some of my text doesn't line up when I put two of them side by side, it kind of make them look awkward and different from each. Responsive layouts and serial design goes into UI/UX web design, it is pretty interesting of how the layout of the website changes based on the aspect ratio of different devices in responsive layouts.

Progress:

I made layouts for my poster for Soda City in my sketchbook. I just experimented how to make interesting layouts that fits the constraints of my grid that I made. In my sketches, I thought I had to make my logo small to have my "picture" be the focal point, but I was told the logo needs to be the focal point instead. I kept that the logo being the focal point in mind when working my layouts digitally, making my logo big and experimenting with my column text. None of my layouts I made digitally look like my sketches I made exactly, the sketches were basically the groundwork and inspiration for my digital layout. I had to print out a poster size of one my layout in tile form, which was somewhat a pain to put together, a lot of tape, but it is a learning experience. Right now I working with one of layout in color and refining it.

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ARTS 246 Blog 4

Reading:

The reading gave a lot of insight on the history of tools designers use to align and layout their stuff, and how to you them. Something that was really could to learn is that these "layout men" who basically draw layouts for a printed piece is what founded the modern practice of graphic design. I really love the diagrams the textbook has on the Gestalt principles, having the figural meaning and an typographical example. The diagrams really helps to understand the purpose of each principle very well, and what not to do. Learning not to have muddled groups and making sure that different elements doesn't conflict with each other would be a good thing to learn when making the layout for our poster.

Progress:

This week we were suppose to finalize our logotype and moving towards the poster project. I was asked to re-trace my logotype in a vector brush since I literally image traced my tracing paper sketch and called it a day. I used the 10pt oval vector brush on Illustrator to the trace my logotype again. Retracing the logotype made it really polished and cleaned up the wonkyness of the logotype before. Some stuff that is off right now that I see is that the arms of the K is wobbly for the new one and not smooth enough. I probably will use the Smooth pen tool to fix that. With all that my logotype will be perfect. We now have to work on making a grid and collecting photos which I both did. Also I have to do sketches of the layout of the poster, which I haven't done.

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ARTS 246 Blog 3

Videos:

The Draplin videos were very good and informative. I seen the LinkedIn one when Nate Puza showed it in my ARTS 102 class. It is crazy how simple it is to jot down your ideas and sketches on paper, Draplin does it effortlessly. I sometimes get kind of scared that I won't get a good idea, but I guess doodling until something just click is very sick during the design process. Draplin testing different adjustments to his logo is just kind of the sketching process as well, just keep on refining and refining. The custom type sketching of Draplin is crazy as well. He made such a good custom type in just 20 minutes, I am amazed. It really does show the power of using tracing paper and trace your type again and again, then also adjusting your letterforms look very fun.

Reading:

I feel this edition of Thinking with Type gone over more stuff than the last edition, and I learned new things. Kerning is actually helpful to make your typography look professional and not awkward, so I love that. Read that tracking lowercase letters is bad, and I do see that it looks awkward. I never really used negative tracking, since I don't want my letters to be closed together, but it got a place in headlines. I really love the new stuff they added with tracking reversed text, tracking justified type, and issues of auto spacing. Understanding how to make your type legible and readable is important. Putting in clarity and using active verbs in this edition is good to show that clarity is important so that the readers are engaged. The hierarchy section is really good with using an ice sundae as an example to show how to make an interesting hierarchy for your spreads. This week's reading was very helpful in discussing new stuff of typography that I never knew or never paid attention too, very good.

Progress.

At first, I wanted "Columbia" to be the shaped of a tent, but discussing with Marius made me see that was not a good decision. The "Soda City" letterform is bubbly, which does match the rigidness of the font of "Columbia". Marius said I could make the letters of "Soda City" fit into a box or have it on one line. Unfortunately "Soda City" would be smaller and while "Columbia" would be the focus of the whole logotype if "Soda City" was on one line. Marius said I could just make "Soda City" in the tent instead, which works well as "Soda City" and "Columbia" has 8 characters. When digitalizing my logotype, I mainly used grids to plan out the spacing of my letters and also helped to draw the letters with the Pen tool. I ended having to kern my letters and adjust letterforms somewhat. "Soda City" being tent-shaped, with "Market" in a rigid boxed letter form below the tent, and "Columbia, SC" being in a similar font like the other two. I extended the right stem of the M and the stem of the T to indicate the poles of the tent. With critique of Wednesday, everyone liked my idea, but the rigidness of letterforms throws the whole logotype kind of off, they suggest maybe redraw the logotype so it is more rounded and less rigid. Marius agreed with that as I could trace the letterforms with tracing paper and going quick on the tracing to make something that is less rigid. Near the end of class, Marius had everyone to redraw their logotype with tracing paper, I traced my logotype fast and also rounded the letters more. When I was finished I had a logotype that looks better than my previous one. Tracing paper is really like magic.

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ARTS 246 Blog 2

Reading:

This week's reading gives a refresher on what I learned in Typographic Design I, but also new things too. Understanding the printing system, and also understanding what a copy, proofs, and proofreaders are very good things to know for me. I knew in letterpress printing that there is thin strips called "leading" that would give gaps between letters and words, but I never knew about furniture that makes up the margins of the page. While author created a text, only the readers decide the meaning of the text is unique statement to be said in the book and it pretty true. I feel I understand alignment of type better in this edition of "Thinking with Type" than the 2nd edition version. The line length section is super helpful for since I have created my layout for my design portfolio, and understanding what is the recommend amount of characters in a line is good. How to mark a paragraph with signifiers and breaking off paragraphs is also helpful for my portfolio. Very helpful stuff in this week's reading.

Progress:

I felt good about my sketches, thought doing the logotype with the vendor tent would be smart and unique. But Valdes didn't really like it, and that kind of shame, he suggested me if the type would made a tent. I made the text "Columbia" to a tent, and I think it is pretty good, I like the one that is boxed yellow. For the font of "Soda City", a bold letterform would work well with the tent-shaped "Columbia". For "Market", I would like to do a different font from "Soda City" to create contrast between them, maybe the same type style as "Columbia", or something is semi-bold. I create my moodboard late since I did not know we had to create moodboards. I want create something that show the chill and fun vibe at Soda City Market. My moodboard is more artsy and somewhat loose. I will try to refine my logotype this weekend.

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ARTS 246 Blog 1

Reading:

I never heard of REM (root em) as a font term so that is new and using percentage values for scaling type is also new. Monospace font is a new term for me, it is very interesting that typographers engineered a typeface with all the characters occupying the same width between each other. Uniwidth is another new term with the width of the characters staying the same in different weights is insane. New classifications of type like Humanists Sans, Grotesque Sans, Geometric Sans, and Scripts built more upon the complexity of typefaces, it is very cool. I never heard of superfamilies that has both serif and sans-serif styles, I never thought they could co-exist or be similar and be family with each other. Variable fonts is also insane, you can transition weights seamlessly?

Jessica Hische Excerpt:

Understanding that the logo is literally is the face of company because that's what make it recognizable and delivers the first impression to people. Setting your ego aside to make a logotype that is able communicate simply, long-lasting, and well designed for your client. Logotypes needs to be simple and there is a lack of freedom that comes with it in order for the logo to be on any kind of medium, that is interesting to me. Hische discussing her own process of logotype with her client is helpful to organize what you need and able organize your thoughts in order. Also her advice of how we can redesign logotypes on our own like rebranding a small business logo or remaking your past logotypes will help to improve and test yourself.

Progress:

I did my process of my new logotype for Columbia's Soda City Market. At first I doodled "Soda City Market" with different weights and forms to get all my ideas out there. I really like the bold lowercase "soda city" on the first picture as it seems something professional with the calm but bolded lowercase letters, upper case letters are loud, so this something different from the rest of ideas I have. I want to make "market" font be different from "soda city", maybe like the uppercase "market" on the bottom of the first picture would work well. Then I look at pictures of Soda City Market, and the first thing I noticed was the rows of vendor tents in all of the pictures. I thought it is very iconic to add along with the type as we are not allow to have soda caps or cans, since it would be cliche and obvious idea. I doodled some ideas with the vendor tent with the type. I noticed adding a "table" along with tent will make it easily recognizable that it is a vendor tent, and the word "Market" can be inside the table. I also thought about adding the two triangles near the peak of tent to indicate a crown since Soda City Market won freetimes Best of Columbia from 2020-2024, and also the fact a crown is shown along with the award. I will attend the Soda City Market on Saturday since I never been there, to get more ideas and the vibes there.

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ARTS 245 Final Course Response

It has been an overall a good semester taking this class. The first month was rough because of the 9 square project, which I had to put all my time and detail into it. In that project, I learned the art of the x-acto blade, understanding the negative and positive space of a subject, and how precise design could be. Professor Nace knows what she doing, she has gone through worse stuff than the 9 square project, but she is trying to nourish us future designers and teach us the skills that makes us ready for the design world. It is surreal how much I learn from this class like kerning type, learning more about grids, getting more comfortable with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, and making a brand. I wish I could spend more time with some of my projects, but I learn stuff in this class like how to use some Illustrator tools that will help me to speed up my design process in future. I deeply appreciate this class and Professor Nace for helping me grow as a designer and giving me new skills.

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ARTS 245 Blog 9 (R+D & Moodboard)

I am redesigning the logo of the Dallas Wings from the WNBA. Some critiques of mine on the logo is that the lime green on the blue feels unpleasing, the text of the "Wings" is covering the neck of the Pegasus, making the winged horse to have a floating head in space, and I am not a fan of the frontal view of the horse, personally it looks unserious. I choose the Dallas Wings because initially I planned to scrap the whole logo including the pegasus, so I don't get bias when I am redesigning the logo. But during researching the inspiration of the Pegasus from Dallas Wings, it is based on Dallas' Flying Red Horse. It is neon red Pegasus sign on one of the earliest skyscrapers in the city, it is extremely beloved and served as a guardian for the city of Dallas. So I planned on keeping the Pegasus motif since its important to the Dallas image. New names I came up for the Dallas Wings are Dallas Queens, Dallas Treads, and Dallas Ventures. These names are based on the strength and freedom that want to convey in their logos, supporting women and girls in their community foundation, and their home and away jerseys name (home: Heroine, away: Explorer). For the mood board I had pictures many ideas of Pegasus, imagery that convey freedom, image of lightning (the Dallas Wings mascot is called Lightning), type that is strong or free flowing, and colors that give a sense of freedom and strength.

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ARTS 245 Blog 8

Reading:

This week reading was great in understanding the revisions and editing that goes on during the final parts of design, mainly text errors. It is good to know if you should use a hyphen, en-dash, or em-dash based on textual context, and also not using prime/hatch marks as quotation marks, too. There is a section of how to insert certain dashes, punctation, and marks by using keystrokes, which is super helpful if I ever need them. I also like the pages of design advices with the red text and descriptions that will help the current or future designers that read this book, it is also a good way to end the book, too. The glossary of editing and proofreading marks is helpful in the future when we are working with an editor or proofreader. This reading relates to this week as we are revising our booklet of our two new letters for two fonts.

Progress:

I finished my booklet last week and send a request to print it at the Design Print Lab on Monday. I got an e-mail saying my spreads of the PDF I send was not 11x17 in., which I found out I work with pages that are 11x17 in., and not pages that are 8.5x11 as the spread would be 11x17. So it sucks that happened, but I managed to fixed it during the night before it would be printed the next day. I sized down all my spreads down with the height fitting the actual 11x17 spread, I extend colored background and fix textual issues. On the critique day, I needed to fix some of positioning on some of my elements and dealing with the rags of one of my textbox. I really like my booklet as it has strong colors, well-presented information, and good identifiers like the different tint for the different letterforms that made up both new letters. This project has been fun to layout my vision and experiments with different ideas.

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ARTS 245 Blog 7

Reading:

There are infinite ways to demonstrate hierarchy in text with the number of symbols, indent, line breaks, and changes of fonts or point size, it is very unique in each work. But having too much hierarchy cues will ruin your work as it will be messy and less elegant. I had used multiple emphasis on text before like underlined, bold, and italic, in the past, I thought it was unique but it look very loud looking back after this reading. The reading also got me thinking about how to show a document digitally for a vast audience, like the visually impaired, people who have old devices, or people from different cultures. It is important that your text is legible and easily understood by your audience. This would be important for our next project of working in InDesign and the layout of our spreads. So it will be a challenge to demonstrate hierarchy correctly in the spreads, like how big a text box should be and where would it be placed?

Progress:

This week we were assigned to make mood board for a classmate of ours, Fernando, from the intake form we filled out and the questions he answered on Tuesday. Most of the images of my mood board I filled out is street art/graffiti since in the intake form, Fernando references street art as one of his design and logo ideas he liked, and also the fact he is skates. I also incorporated the color red that he liked for most of the images too. For the illustrations I picked at the bottom, I wanted things that relates to Fernando and his answers. The first one is a hand drawn creature with three heads, which Fernando is interested in creature design, games that has creatures with intricate features and anatomy, and he really like hand drawn art. Second illustration is a painting of street artists, which I picked it because it relates to street art and I liked the colors and the rough painting that used here. The two other illustration are simple street art to have that simple feel that Fernando like in the LEGO logo and the graffiti is also red which I could use for my color palette. Two of my texture images have this gothic bloody texture that relates to the gothic style that Fernando is into, which I could use as texture in the logo. I chose the red pencil scribble circle image because another connection to hand drawn art and the symbol of the circle that I believe that represent life, sun, and unity which Fernando sees the color red as blood which he thinks of life and the lifeforce of himself. The red wave texture is connection to Fernando's love for the ocean and places like Puerto Rico and Hawaii. I had a graffiti typography that is simple that connects to the simplicity of the LEGO logo and the idea of street art. The Burger King sign reminds me a lot of the playfulness and simplicity of the LEGO when I first saw it during the process the of mood board. Last typography is a creepy and inky font that connects to the creepy creatures that Fernando is interested in. For my color palette I choose a red and yellow from the the Burger King sign, the orange is from me finding an orange with the color guide from the yellow. The dark brown and the cream color too is from the color guide, they are my dark and light color.

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ARTS 245 Blog 6

Reading:

This week's reading is a good refresher on the anatomy of type as in the kerning assignment, I did not place the baseline directly underneath the bottom of the letters so the baseline is overlapped or far away from the type, I forgot to account with the baseline. It is cool to note that one point of type is 1/72 of an inch, so a 72pt type would be an inch when printed out. Even after the introduction of desktop computers, making a complete typeface is a tough task, because of all of the different set of letters in a type family like italics, compressed, and small caps. This give me an even deeper respect for people that makes typefaces. Logotype is somewhat similar to the Remaking Language assignment that we are doing this week, manipulating existing or custom letters and type abstractly that connects to produce something that is visually appealing. The reading is a good overview on the anatomy of type, the classifications, and the families of type.

Progress:

For this week's assignment, we are making a 27th letter for two fonts from parts of existing letters of each font. I chose Baskerville Old Face for my serif font, and Franklin Gothic Demi for my sans serif font. My process for my sketches is using a random number generator from 1-26 to get three different letters and brainstorming in my head of how to combine the letters together. I first did the 8 sketches of Baskerville as there are curves and serif, which I try to precise when tracing the letters with the help of my ruler for straight lines and the handle of my scissors for the curves. The unfortunately thing that I didn't keep in mind when sketching the Baskerville is to make the new letter within the type size of a M, in which only two of the sketches I work with. I kept the size issue in mind in sketching with Franklin Gothic Demi and most of the sketches I could work with and finalize them. I picked the sketch with (Z, J, U) for my Baskerville and (H, R, C) for my Franklin Gothic Demi. On Illustrator, I decided to trace my individual letterforms with the Pen tool as it is easier to manipulate the letters in my opinion than using the actual letters. I found tracing Baskerville easier than Franklin Gothic Demi, because Franklin Gothic Demi has symmetry and right angles like for the H and R, which is less forgiving than the curves of Baskerville. From the critiques, my Baskerville letter looks good, but for my Franklin Gothic Demi, Professor Nace said that stem of the H to curve bowl of the R is awkward. In letters of the alphabet, there isn't abrupt curve from a right angle, Prof. Nace said to round top of H's stem to connect with the roundness of the R, and also smoothen the straight crossbar of the H that is connecting to the the curve of the C.

[dlinarts246-03]

ARTS 265 Blog 5

Reading:

This week's reading is pretty informative and useful for our next project and the one we finished. It give some tips on kerning, which I did read the kerning section of this week's reading before doing the kerning project. It makes me look about for the letters (W, Y, V, T, L) when kerning. Tracking section was good, teaching me that you should not negative track to save space, it would make the words hard to read when close together. Leading was also important, that more the leading improves readability and make each lines independent from each other. I didn't know that there are names for different types of alignment, so getting to know how they work and how to use them correctly is good to learn. I used vertical lowercase stack type in my first project in my ARTS 102 class, I ended committed a type crime that I didn't know, but I do see uppercase letters are more stable in stacked in lowercase and also the fact that stacked letters should be rarely used. I learned what letters to look out for kerning, how to use tracking, using tracking effectively, making use of alignments, and the use of stacked type.

Progress:

This week's project is an experience for me to learn how type function. I didn't do the assignment during the weekend since I was busy to do it. I finished the CHARLIE kerning on Monday, but the kerning is slightly off on some parts of it. For the gobstopper kerning, I did most of it Monday and finished it up in class on Tuesday, but I do think I got the kerning right for that. I finished the VIOLET kerning and little on the blueberry pie kerning after Tuesday class. Wednesday, I finished everything else all the kerning and did the inking on the first three types until midnight. I woke up early on Thursday to finished the inking on the rest of the types before class, I manage to finish it right before going to class. In class, I defined the stress line on each type and turn all my tracing paper. Types that I felt I didn't kern right was the CHARLIE and the blueberry pie one, as I made some simple mistakes when doing them. The most difficult part of the assignment is the curves as it feel not so simple to correctly trace them even if you have a curved object. This assignment give me a respect for typographers that do type on hand, because you have to be delicate and precise.

[dlinarts246-03]

ARTS 245 Blog 4 (9/27)

Reading:

I was not really into this week's reading, I just didn't find it interesting or useful right now or to the new project that we were given. It felt just like an overview of text, how text changes throughout the years, and what designers do with text. How some books defined the purpose of typography is interesting, is it to enhance readability or help readers to avoid reading? The picture that shows a monk climbing up a page from a 13th century book to replace an incorrect line of text with a correct one in the bottom is creative and funny way to correct sentences back then, in my opinion. I also did not know how important spaces are, if spaces was not introduce during Ancient Greece, today sentences would be incoherent. There nothing else in the reading that I found interesting, there was something about text is better at describing a concept than an image, because text can be translated and be understood, which an image can't be translated universally.

Progress:

The progress for this week is that I finished the gray reading project, it was kind of fun to do. Last weekend, I drew thumbnails and brainstorm in my sketchbook of some grids that I would do for this project. I made sure that I could easily measure and cut my type, so I made all my dimensions in whole inch or half of an inch, and have even gutters so I am not dealing with fractions of an inch. I only printed out my cuts of magazines and newspaper on Monday, so I spend the evening of Monday of cutting my printed paper and doing my first two squares and gluing it on the white cardstock. I did my column grid and my experimental grid on Monday since there will be less piece to deal with and gluing down. Problems I have is that one of the margins of the column grid is not 0.5 inch I think and the diagonal gutter was not straight in the experiment grid as I mismeasured the pieces for it. Tuesday, I glued down my two white cardstock to the black Crescent cardstock, and then cut them. Unfortunately the black Crescent cardstock was hard to cut as the paper was layer thick, also with the fact that x-acto blade was dull. So after I struggled to cut the first square, I changed out my dull blade with another one, but it still was pretty difficult to cut the second one. Wednesday, I did my modular grid, and I think its perfect as all of the dimension are correct. I glue downed the grid onto the black Crescent paper and struggled to cut it again. I did gain some cut from pressing down on the back end of blade, that I didn't think would be sharp, to cut down the Crescent paper. I feel very good about my modular grid, and feel okay about my experimental and column grid.