Module: Typography and Layout

Grade: 1st class - 75%

For this task I was to produce a poster that gave information about the subject of typography.

I decided to base my poster on an observation I found whilst working as a Graphic Designer; that regardless of the amount of fonts I had access to, I spent a lot of time searching through my font library thinking I don't have enough fonts.

I chose the phrase "99% of my time as a typographic designer... I have no fonts", and in Adobe InDesign used different elements of the text to illustrate different typographic elements, with their names and definitions, that I had considered when designing the poster.

I liked the humorous take on the concept, which I felt made the poster more interesting than just providing information or definitions relating to typography, and was happy with the poster design.

Module: Typography and Layout

Grade: 1st class - 75%

The above two images are spread one and two of a magazine layout I designed in Adobe InDesign for the article "On White Space in Graphic Design" by Keith Robertson, originally published in Emigre magazine.

I used themes from the article text when designing its magazine spread, focusing on the idea that the semiotic values white space connotes, that is a publication for the bourgeois, high-class reader, is seen by some as more valuable than the extra paper needed to be used and just left blank, in order to create that white space.

This idea struck me as somewhat wasteful, and I felt it showed a disregard for our natural resources and the extra trees needed to be felled in order for the paper they provide, through their sacrifice, to ultimately be left blank. 

I wanted to design my magazine spread in a way that would both demonstrate the concept of white space, whilst also subtly commenting on this hierarchy of values.

The article focused on the use of white space on paper being most prevalent in Japan, so I created digital illustrations of trees in a sumi-e or ink wash style, often used in East-Asian art, leaving white space between the forking branches and positioning them upon the magazine spread, sometimes combined with a rectangle to resemble kakemono / kakejiku hanging scrolls, to illustrate both the concept of white space left between the branches and the irony of the trees that needed to be used to create the paper on which the magazine spread could be printed.

The first spread was tasked as being the opening spread of the article, and so I kept the article text to a minimum on the first page, instead using illustration to reflect the subject of the article and providing the article title and author. On this first page I also used text as image, using the words "White Space" to represent their concept, through colour and spacing. I chose to create the spread using purely black and white, at varying opacities, to better reflect the concept of white space, from which the use of colour would distract.

Throughout the spreads I used text weight and point size to create hierarchy, and used a grid system to align the body text in a way that provided visual consistency throughout the pages. I also included page furniture, such as the page numbering, magazine name and issue month, along with their accompanying lines, to give structure to the spreads.