whats next?

I would very much so like to design my own alphabet.



Either using good old handy work..

Or checking out FontLab which I don't yet know anything about.

Either way, I've printed the whole alphabet in helvetica as a template - and I'm ready to rock! (errr)

Evaluation

"We are so obsessed with the Net and technology that we forget the message... We imagine to be able to do anything, and our software helps us believe we can... But we must move beyond the 'how' to reconsider the 'what' and the 'why'..." - Neville Brody

For this brief, I set out exploring typography; its definition, where it occurs and how it can be created, using both new methods & old. I wanted to find out whether there were any parallels between old & new in the type world, whether they were significantly different.. is there a clean divide? and whether we approach them differently.

My research began on the Internet. I set up a new blog for the project; an up to date place where I can document and manage my research, thoughts and workings related to the project which can be edited where needed and viewed instantly. I was able to use this effectively by maintaining interest in the subject, noting down any possible areas to research, following through, and visually representing it - using found images, scans & my own photographs, via my blog. Using the camera on my phone allowed me to document when things happened unexpectedly. I find the process of documenting the steps I take a part of who I am as a visual practitioner now.

My first Internet search for the project was to help me to identify the methods of creating type that I am already familiar with. Being able to list these on my blog, along with pictures, created a visual starting point for my mind to map out from.

Although the internet is swarming with documentation of typography, old and new, it can be quite over bearing, and I found myself getting together a small bibliography of reading & visual material, which got me away from the computer.
I know very little about typography, so I found 'Type & Typography' by Baines & Haslam to be a very easy and informative source of knowledge, using simple language and a layout with bite sized text & plenty of images.
I jumped quickly to more image based & specialty books, to find out more about my key areas. I was already drawn to old fashion methods such as embroidery, and found that the best information could be found in old books which weren't concerned about the crafts future, but focused on it's history.

Conversation proved to be a brilliant tool for sharing information and ideas about the brief. I was asking a lot of questions - a lot of Whys? and Hows? to learn about the way people work and about their motives. Why old/new? How has technology affected us as artists/designers? Is creative typography a waste of time?
I enjoyed sharing books and magazines and having books, films, magazines and the like, recommended.
This interdependence also stretched to the Internet. We, as a year group, learnt more about each other's area of study, both through conversation, and viewing blogs. We were then able to pass on any information we found which related to another's project, through linking, posting images & videos or simply sharing conceptual ideas. This, along with a genuine passion to learn about typography, helped to keep the project flowing, helped me to understand the importance and relevance of research to a project, helped me to set and reach goals in what I wanted to learn about and surprise myself at how interested I have become. The penny continues to drop.

The research I was conducting began to stretch further than typography. The issue of old crafts being taken over by new technologies was appearing in far more areas than I at first thought. A lot of the answers to my questions were pushing me towards the ‘arts & crafts movement’, which I regrettably didn’t get round to researching as deep as I would have liked. I ended up keeping the posts on my blog limited specifically to typography, to avoid sending myself in all sorts of directions. Using the bookmark feature (I haven’t used this before!!!) has helped me to digitally take note of my path of research which didn’t make it onto my blog, for future reference as I wish to keep this project on going.

I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in with all this. My rationale for this project came from a fascination with typography & crafts, being impressed by them and their aesthetics, but through learning some processes of creating them, I found I might not have the patience required to create a great workload and was taken out of my comfort zone (literally! See wood carving!). I know this to be the case when using both technology and looking at craft. I felt rushed (mostly through excitement) to view the final piece and my outcomes suffered. I’ve learnt that researching thoroughly might just be the key to avoiding silly mistakes, which could spoil a lot of hard work and waste time. Always be prepared, plan out the desired finished outcome and take your time.

I learnt, through my own practice and the conversations with others, that time is not on crafts side, only freedom, less technical complications and a quality, when done properly, which is unique, beautiful and long lasting. This said, there are still so many gaps in my knowledge – my research has merely skimmed the surface of a small selection of typography craft, although it feels I have been churning stuff out and absorbing information until I’m saturated - the reality is, I still know very little.

I feel indifferent about the take-over of technology. In the quote from earlier in my study from Neville Brody, he's not concerned about technology ruining hand craft, but more so about the pace in which technology allows us the create work. We are loosing touch with what we are making, and the reason for it. As with each mini project I worked on, as lo-tech as it seemed, the aid of technology, whether using a computer to connect to the Internet, a camera, a scanner or a printer – helped immensely, but not allowing it to take over was very liberating and I felt it gave the work more identity.

Right now I feel that to be a good designer, you need to use whatever you can get your hands on. You need to have a genuine interest and passion for what you’re doing and learn plenty about it. You must experiment and try different routes, to be sure that you understand what you creating as your 'final piece'. Crafts may no be 'practical' or a productive use of my time as a student - but I'm pleased to have small amount of knowledge I have gained and hope it will change to way I work slightly.

Hello Again!!

Only been in the AV suite again, working on a new animation haven't I!
From my first attempt, I found that using pen ink on paper was not the most vivid and visual way of using the animation booth.
After conducting some stop frame animation research, I found that the most effective way of creating drawing based animation is through using a whiteboard, but I also gathered that this method is getting a bit worn out.

The use of objects in flat animation is something which interests me, either through collage or inanimate objects (oboy, I've only just realised what 'inanimate' means!).


A bird I animated in the clip.

Thinking up a little bit of a narrative for the animation this time around sure helped (as opposed to no preparation in the first attempt) and just spending the time before hand, making the letters and shapes to be animated, made the process run much more smoothly.


The 'Bonjour' bit was helped by a page in Phil Baines and Andrew Haslam's 'Type & Typography' where they look at the spoken language and the phenomes of a selection of languages.



They happened to have frames of a man saying 'Bonjour'.



I copied the steps as closely as I could in my prep bits for the animation.




Thats not to say the project was 100% smooth - my troubles came with TECHNOLOGY! dun dun duuuuuun!


Hello Animation II from Kate Prior on Vimeo.

Despite taking notes from James who helped me the first time round, I managed to save the thing in the wrong resolution, then deleted all the frames I had thieved. bugger. Serves me right for being a know-it-all.

James said me doing this shouldn't be a problem, and can be sorted out in post production (after adding the music in 'Final Cut') but some how it ended up too wide. I need to get to grips more with these programs in order to make better animations and to stop making silly mistakes.
I make these because of my lack of patience and need to see the final piece ASAP!
I think I can identify a lot of what I did wrong myself 

1. Some parts go too fast - I'd like to learn how to take better control of this, and identify the problem areas before its too late.
2. The exposure on the camera was set to automatic, and would change depending what was put down in it's view, creating a change in lightness in the animation. Putting the camera on a set exposure would have prevented this

but ass for the actual animation, I'm pleased with the outcome, and enjoyed the process- after overcoming my fear of the AV suite, its quite a nice place to sit and work in.

I want to come up with more ideas for this kind of animation - moving away from just using 'greetings' & make something with a bit more meaning - maybe tell a story.

Where can I go from here?

1. Be more creative
2. Be more prepared
3. Spend at least a week coming up with a story board
4. Use multimedia
5. Be able to match an animation to music (i.e. Music Video)

Hot Gossip - Real Mess by Virgilio Villoresi


The Knife - Like a pen by Andreas Nilsson

Frustration City, Arizona.

Yester-evening, as promised, my Dad gave me what was to be a quick, beginners tutorial on carving. 4 hours later and I'm crying, shaking, vomiting from being hunched over for so long and can barely move my fingers.

Okay, so it was that bad, just not what I expected.

Dad getting me started:



One of his carvings he made earlier:




He isn't interested in carving letters - but he picked out a book which had some information about letters and numerals;





He also got out a piece by my late Grandad whittled with a penknife over 20 years ago - It's a sign for my parents house, but never got used.



My turn!



I used the bottom half of the wood (actually a chopping board) as a practice area. I picked up the basics quite quickly, but started to get a bit cocky - and ended up loosing my creative focus and was absolutely stumped for ideas and different ways of carving.



The top half was used for more of a final piece;



It was most certainly exciting to learn about this craft. There's so much to remember, so many precautions, and it requires a lot of practice, skill, and patience. All 3 things, I figured I don't have right now.

I asked my dad why he does wood carving. As its a hobby, he said he isn't that motivated to do carving, but likes the finished piece. Once he gets set on a project he gets absorbed by it and enjoys the time spent in his 'workshop'.
I asked about machinery which is used for carving - and he said that there are things in carving that you can't program a machine to do.
The thing which concerns me about carving is when working on a large piece and you make a mistake in the final touches - there's no chance of correcting it and you've ruined some really hard work!

Another thing which occured to me is whether this is how you do block printing. I'm carving at wood, and if the letters were the back to front and inked up, I sure could make a print from it!

Vernacular Spectacular

Some personal photos taken on my Yashica T4 to include in my on-going type journal.

Not quite the database of Douglas Wilson, but maybe one day.

This is a screen grab of just some of the polaroids he recently uploaded to his Flickr

I'm not a freak or owt, but...

I've been sewing with my hair;




My intention was to write 'Hairy' in this style (surprise surprise) but I was getting no where - I didn't have enough hair, and the hair I did get would snap. You could only make tiny stitches too which caused little progress. I do love the effect though, its like some kind of hairy leg.

Searching 'Hair Embroidery' has taken me back to the wunderful Jenny Hart;

Oh Unicorn
9" x 9", 2005
hair embroidered on leather
These are single strands of human hair (artist's own) embroidered on soft leather.

Above is her usual style, combining iconic images with dreamy loopy type.

Laura Normandin



Jennifer Perry

I think this is the most hairy example. The fact that hair isn't made of fibers makes for an interesting effect.

Caroline Webb

My Dad's dream woman! After my Mum of course.



Website



I read about Caroline Webb a few weeks ago in Eye magazine. She was giving tips on 'Hand Cutting in Wood'.

"Wood letter-cutters draw their forms with a soft pencil outline but they must take note of the wood's grain: broad deep vertical 'V' cuts are best made across the grain."

She also does linocuts!!

GIF

Its annoying that I can't find any stop motion animation on Youtube and Vimeo which reaallly inspires me.

I came across this GIF on Lazyoaf.com though...



Kyoot!

Trying to steer away from gif. Its a good way to put lots of things together in one image, but you can't have music on them and the resolution is quite low.

- Ah Boooooo. Its not actually moving. It was moving, I swear! You can see it HERE though. Panic over!

CLEVER!

Experiment in Typographic Exploration#1 from James Mckinnon on Vimeo.

Its great how lo-tech this idea is and how much he struggles with the tape - so real, but he presents it in such a digital way.
I wonder if he managed to do the whole alphabet?

Recap & Reflect

I began this project by looking at what I know about typography, and the different ways in which you can create it.

1. Letterpress
2. Calligraphy
3. Screen Print
4. Needle Point
5. Digital
6. General Hand Work

I wanted to explore the methods from this list which interested me, but also research different ways in which type is created (the gaps in my knowledge).

I started off by looking at needle point, and the different styles within the craft by which you can create a type face;

Cross Stitch - I found that although it gave a very traditionally pleasing effect, the weave of the 'banding' in which you stitched caused a few restrictions in the shapes and lines you could make.



I used cross stitch to attempt more modern styles of type;



'Crewel' - Free hand stitch (a bit of the gap in my knowledge filled there!!) Possibly my favourite style of stitch. You're able to build different textures and shapes. But there is something to be said for having a grid to work with like in cross stitch. The wooden hoop seen in the image below helps a lot when doing needle point, I was doing the cross stitch without one!



I looked at 'Blackwork' - not quite as free hand as 'Crewel' but not as restrictive as cross stitch.




All 3 of these methods got me thinking about Old vs New in terms of creating type. These are all old/traditional ways in which you can create text, patterns & images. But the digital age has taken over so much that what was once a craft taught to young girls - an important talent which would help their families legacy live through the 'samplers' which they would create - is now very rarely used.

Its always pleasing to see young people now creating hand & machine stitched work - and even better when an exhibition comes out of it; like 'Forget me-not' at the Hanahou Gallery, New York - which I found documented on Flickr;




I found quite a recent example of cross stitch being used in the media;




The use of cross stitch to show 'The Family' is a very traditional reference - from what I mentioned earlier - and I hope this was an actual cross stitch, rather than digitally created.
It got me thinking about the ways stitch can be reproduced digitally. I looked at online fonts;




I came to the conclusion (and hope) that these fonts aren't used to replace the craft, but as an alternative for times when you need a fast representation.

Another method of embroidering type is by using a sewing machine;





Although the main use for sewing machine is for the creation of clothing and other fabric based items, on many machines you can do 'Free motion stitching' where the needle and foot gives you the freedom to move your fabric in any direction, rather than straight forwards and back.

I have used a sewing machine in the past, but never as a means of creating typography. I think it will create neatness which isn't possibly through handwork, but could be hard to control.

If I were to go one step further - I'd try a digital sewing machine; These are basically robots, you can tell them exactly what you want creating and it will do it for your (with some restriction, no doubt).

"Probably the most exciting thing to happen in the world of sewing for a long long time has been the merger of digital technology with the sewing machine."

Read all about it right here.

Word on the street is that they have one of these in the Fashion/textiles department at college - if I could just overcome my fear of fashion students!!

But with both technology based methods and traditional hand work, there is a lot of frustration.
With sewing by hand, I'm forever getting knots - putting the work down and leaving it for a day - hoping the knot will somehow untie itself. Unfortunately, if you can't untie the knot yourself, you have to cut it out, which at the least will take you back a few stitches - and at the most, ruin the last 5 hours hard work and concentration - which leads me to 2 other key factors of hand stitch - the time - the letters I created by cross stitch measure around 1" squared and took up to 3 hours each to stitch, causing dumb bum, fuzzy eyes & nausea. Secondly, the sheer amount of concentration you have to constantly be putting in to avoid things like knots, is unbelievable, but incredibly hypnotic and therapeutic.

Similar things occur when using machinery & digital technology. In my experience, computers are around 99% reliable, but that 1% can destroy the last weeks/months/years work. Frustration can be caused by fumbling your way around a program, not understanding the quickest route to your desired destination, computers slowing down, crashing and freezing.

Although 'machines' don't always have a computer brain, they have mechanics, which is more than your hands - you know your hands like... the back of your hand, and very little can go wrong. Using a machine gets very frustrating when it starts eating up your fabric, threads get tangled, disappear into the machine, or a needle snaps because you're accidentally going too fast.

I looked at typography created by hand;

looking at Mike Perry & Edward Fella:


A page from 'Hand Job' by Mike Perry


A page from 'Letters on America' by Edward Fella

I looked at the different techniques used by professional hand typographers and also the work of anonymous typographers in Ed Fellas' book and in my black & white photography elective project - 'Hand type of Hyde Park'


(black & white photography - another process which contributes to my old vs new arguments)

I looked at Job Wouters; And the steps he takes in making his final pieces, which often includes screen and block printing.



Creative Review, February

I made my own screen print from hand produced type using pencil and paper - scanning the images into photoshop to perfect the image ready for screen printing -





I looked at moving type;

Was inspired by Stop Frame Animation:

Pornophonic Orchestra - Dimanche après-midi from yann deval on Vimeo.

Got pissed off at Kinetic Typography:

(I've recently been thinking about why exactly this pisses me off, and I think its because they all seem to be made using film monologues - The reason which I've only just realised is that its hard to think up your own text for a project like this, especially when you're learning - so I'm sorry, Kinetic Typography, for slagging you off.)

I checked out the history of kinetic typography, found that Saul Bass was the first to use it effectively;



I created my own stop frame animation using hand drawn type and a program called 'Frame Thief':

My First Stop Frame Animation from Kate Prior on Vimeo.

Although this play session had quite a good outcome; there was still so much I had to learn and think about before making something of a better standard;



There are more things I want to add to that list - I need to be more experimental with ways of making motion - using different materials, not just pens. But now I feel confident about using animation booth, I want to continue with ideas for a better, more experimental, animation.

I have just under a week before the deadline of this project, and there is still so much I want to work on; including another animation.