Ariana Dela Vega
School Portfolio
Typography
For the rough draft I wanted to mainly get my ideas down and look for opportunities to see how I can further the design. I thought the "u" connecting to the "g" was interesting and could be read differently, but that was it. So, I had to come up with a way to carry that into the rest of my design.
This is a second draft, I tried to show more movement but this still seemed too static for me.
For the final design, I rearranged some letters and went into finder detail with the placement, measurements, and making sure there were no white slivers where black letterforms should be. I had it go from left to right showing the bottom of the letterform, then the middle, and finally the top. I had the letterforms look like the continue into other boxes and I made the whole design curve inwards at the right to add movement.
Project 2 A Game of Black and White:
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I keep running into the problem of not leaving myself enough line space and having a consistent baseline, despite practicing on grid paper.
I decided to start practicing individual letters to get in the zone.
I was also playing with how to write my letters, seeing which ones worked best for me.
Again, I need to have a consistent baseline and linespace, but also I think I'm holding my pen wrong and that's making it difficult for me to move it right.
Color change! I thought writing with one of the other pens I bought would be helpful.
I'm having the same problems using the other pen as I was with the green pen, so I definitely know it's me and not the pens that are giving me jagged an inconsistent letters.
I decided to give the phrase a shot, I obviously need more improvement so this isn't the final.
I finally cut my nails and it was much easier to hold the pen. I noticed a difference right away, so lesson learned, have short nails for Typography. I wanted to use the thicker pen because I haven't really played with it as much.
I went back to the thin end except for one part. The new hand position is still something I'm getting used to. I feel like it's easier for me to write smaller, but when I start writing it ends up bigger than expected. I have to watch out for the spacing between letters and line space.
Project 3 Calligraphy:
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Practice:
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So, just so you know I do practice outside of class a lot including during other classes (haha). This was two days after we first started, so it's pretty rough.
I wanted to play with how I write my letters to see what fit for me. I should have been making my letters longer, they seem squished.
Oh, and I act like a middle schooler sometimes, just FYI if you couldn't notice by the way I write my boyfriend's name. I also liked to write the names of characters from a show I like, Steven Universe.
This was before class started and I was trying to write in the new position Dom attempted to teach me, but my hand is stubborn. I think it is helping me write the letters more consistently though, but it's still rough.
I feel like it's easier to improve if I write phrases rather than just the letters over and over again. I still need to have even spacing and an aligned baseline, but I also think I have to work on making my letters look related to each other because right now they don't look like they belong together. These are phrases I've seen and I really liked no matter how silly and back-handedly inspirational.
I was planning on having my nails long for halloween, buuuut they were getting in the way when I practiced Tyopgraphy.
I should cut my nails, but I haven't. I changed the way I hold the pen and I think it's worse (>.<) Because my contrast is inconsistent and not too visible.
Proj 4 Syntax/Semantics I:
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I didn't add any image searches for "submissive" because they were NSFW (Not Safe For Work) as I'm sure you know (e.e)
The Letter U:
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"In the Old Roman square capitals, both U and V have the simple angular form" (medievalwriting.com)
"In the rustic capital script, it is asymmetrical and rounded on one side" (medievalwriting.com)
"The uncial U and V are both rounded, with a straight vertical on the right" (medievalwriting.com)
"In this example of New Roman cursive, the minuscule u and v both have a minimalist, ronded form" (medievalwriting.com)
"In the pre-Carolingian minuscule scripts or National Hands, the only differences relate to stylistic variations between scripts rather than essential differences in letter from. In a 6th century half uncial script u and v are broad and squarish" (medieval writing.com)
"In the specialised book script Corbie ab they sport little wedges at the top" (medievalwriting.com)
"In an old northern Italian book hand the tops of the letter curve in so as to nearly close at the top" (medievalwriting.com)
"This example of Merovingian minuscule or Germanic book hand has u and v with little wedges top and bottom" (medievalwriting.com)
"The specialised book hand Luxeuil minuscule has letters very similar to the above" (medievalwriting.com)
Project 5 Syntax and Semantics II:
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For my Savory Food option, I chose the filipino style sausage longanisa. It's so bad and fatty to have, but tastes so good. I can eat this for every meal. It's pretty short and stubby. It looks wider than normal sausages, because it is.
The email designs are definitely the hardest. I tried to look at google for inspiration, but these are the same old icons that I don't want to use because they would make my piece look too illustrative and straight forward.
For one of the ideas I had to show my height was having the number 5 as a suspect in a police line up, because the stripes are used to tell how tall a suspect is. I thought this was a funny concept, but don't worry I'll never be in one of these in real life.
I wanted to find a different way to measure something, and I thought this was interesting. The person is using an object and perspective to measure proportions of his subject, I guess. I applied this to one of my ideas, where the 1in is being compared to the 5ft.
I immediately thought of a measuring tape for the height section. Maybe it's because I used to play with them like a toy when I was younger, or most likely because it's a ruler. For one of my ideas, I made the 5 look like a measuring tape and used the abbreviated icons ("') as the markers.
The first idea I had was to make the numbers look like a road with a front facing perspective, so it got smaller as it went on and at the end, my street name would be there.
Thinking of more creative ideas for the Address section was challenging, so I did some research. I like on "Pike" Dr. and aside from my address, I wanted to see what else "Pike" stood for.
So...Pike is a type of fish...I am not going to be using fish as inspiration because I think it would be really confusing to work with since it has nothing to do with street addresses.
By now my search history looks very strange, but this is something I can work with. This is much cooler than the fish and the pointed weapon can also double as a directional arrow. I used that idea in one of my sketches, where the Pike weapon/arrow is the "I" in "Pike Dr."
Project 6 Syntax and Semantics III:
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I thought it would be a good idea to look up the book where the paragraphs came from. I found this overview on the book on goodreads.com and I left the link below. I thought this would be a good idea to understand the paragraphs more.
Here are some reviews on this book from Amazon, which I thought would be helpful to get a feeling of the book. If the words are too small in this picture, you can see the reviews in this link:
This assignment combined with the fact that Homer & Langley took place during the Great War reminded me of this poster (even though this was a different time period). The Futurists wanted type to show the feeling and actions of the sounds of war here. I remembered this from my Design in Visual Culture class (see, I learn things).
Here is another example to Futurist typography. The way that the three paragraphs fit in with all the other letters and words there is giving me ideas of how to approach this project.
I found this while I was looking up images of E.L. Doctorow. I thought this quote was enlightening.
Here, E.L. Doctorow is interviewed about how he came to be a writer and specifically, the effect music has on him and his writing. This is important because a big part in writing and design is making the elements flow, like music, having a rhythm to the piece. It's a short article, but you can read it in the link below.
This article was interesting, because it basically tells the reader how E.L. Doctorow adapts his writing style to fit the genre and message for his books. This also gives some insight on his books and how he approaches them. You can read the full article in the link below. As a designer it is also important to leave your own style when working with certain clients so there aren't mixed signals of the message or clashing styles.
This was a famous poster from WWI propaganda recruiting soldiers. I wanted to get an idea of the type of fonts this time period used.
Project 7 Poster:
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For my poster, I really wanted to do something more than just a collage, I wanted to tell a story. I also wanted to combine illustration with photos but so far, I don't know how I'm going to do that. I was having a bit of trouble trying to think about what I wanted as a representational image. A big part of this is trying to organize all of my work.
I did some research on InDesign booklets because they are able to fit a lot of text in a page. I don't want to copy anything I saw, this is more for ideas and help organizing my text. The link below leads you to my board.
I've been interested in this type of style for a while. It seems fun, yet structured. I was thinking of having different pictures of details in the broken up shapes.
The image of the legs layered over the rest of the collage is interesting. It shows importance.
Here, the photo collage feels like it's breaking. I like the idea of movement, but I think I would want to make something more exaggerated to show gravity. This type of collage doesn't use the full page, which is nice because it seems like it's easier to look at.
Another collage that doesn't use the whole page. The images are cut and arranged to create an interesting shape. I can use my imagination to put the missing pieces together and see the image as a whole.
This artist took old family photos, cut them up, and took a picture of them rearranged. He created an interesting collection and you can see the other collages he made in the link below. This is collage #5.
I like the pattern topographic maps have, they are organic and somehow all fit together. I'm thinking of layering process work with the finals. This pattern is rather busy though, I would need to have lines that are more spaced out.
I get more rhythm out of this pattern. I liked how this pattern broke up the main parts because they are very easy to see but still follow the style.