Art Project: Typography

Group Piece:

My favorite part of this project was creating the designs using Adobe Illustrator. This was my favorite part because I got to explore Illustrator a little more that I previously did. At first I knew a few tips and tricks here and there, but now I feel semi-pro. 

Something that I thought was the most challenging was actually coming up with the designs using the font the group leader chose (futura). This was rather difficult because in the font, "futura," all the characters are pointed which meant that many characters were going to be made might need to be pointed. To me, this limited the possibilities of what I could create. Eventually I was able to get around this by angling each letter differently and "cutting off" any bits that interfered with my overall piece. Soon enough, I was able to create rounded characters.

If I could do this project again, something that I would do differently is finish my pieces earlier. I say this because I had a few more ideas that I wanted to put out. Unfortunately, I ran out of time. Early into the project, I had a little bit of a rough start partially because it took me some time to come up with something to make. Eventually the ideas started to flow and I got a few things made. 

The group that I got set up with was composed of the people that I wouldn't preferably want to work with, but we got along well and got a lot done in the given time. We were quite a diverse bunch but we found some common ground. 

For this project, I would give myself an "A" because I filled the requirements and did a little more. This project called for a group piece and two personal pieces. My group and I completed the group piece and I complete three personal pieces. 

Overall, I think that this was an "okay" project mostly because this is not the style of art that I would do. There are indeed a lot of great pieces of typography out there and I think they are pretty cool, but this is not necessarily a style that I favor too much. This project was fun and I think other students might enjoy it more than I did. 

The first of the three other student pieces that I decided to display the shark because it stuck out to me. It was detailed and quite distinct. Some of the other students created pieces that didn't really catch my attention too well. The second piece I chose displayed multiple images in one. It seemed like some kind of mask and it was something that I thought was unique and eye-catching. Not very many made a character that had more than one image/purpose/message. The third piece I chose to display was created by using Helvetica NEUE. I chose this piece because it was by far the most distinctive image. It was very clear and it sparked my interest in japanese culture since the image was that of a koi fish.

This project involved a lot of time in Adobe Illustrator. Throughout the duration of this project, my views on Illustrator didn't really change. To be honest, I didn't really have anything to say about Illustrator other than it is a really useful set of programs. Often I find myself using something along the lines of Adobe such as Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and After Effects.