Project 3
About the Project
After we established basic skills using Illustrator during our last assignment, this project enabled us to add to our skillsets by not having as many constraints and therefore allowing a lot more creativity with our compositions. This project was assigned with the intention of researching and appreciating the origins of classic and very well-known fonts. Using that research, I was able to incorporate the history of the fonts into the visual presentation of my assigned font, Garamond. I really enjoyed this project because it challenged me to push my boundaries in terms of my creativity. When I initially sat down to make some sketches for some possible poster ideas, I was really lost and drew some sketches that I internally wasn’t satisfied with. However, after a second attempt at a new set of sketches, I was able to get my creative juices flowing and produce a range of unique sketches that I was a lot more satisfied with. In retrospect, I think it’s really important to have a vision when designing something, but also be able to be fluid in terms of making changes and modifying as I try new things during the design process.
Project Process
Origins of Garamond
The font Garamond falls under the group of old-style serif typefaces. It was created in the sixteenth century, designed by a Parisian engraver named Claude Garamond. Some distinctive characteristics of this font are clear stroke contrast and capital letters on the model of Roman square capitals. Another one is a relatively low height of lower-case letters, referred to is the x-height of the font. This particular characteristic throws off the proportion of size of uppercase versus lowercase fonts. There is also an ascender of letters which is basically when certain letters extend beyond the cap height. There are also some more specific differentiations in Garamond for individual letters, like axes of certain letters.
Initial Sketches
Above, there is a range of sketches in terms of concept. First, I have a Dr. Seuss inspired sketch, since Garamond is the official font for all of those books. I wanted the classic red and white hat to be constructed of manipulated letters about the font and its origins. The second sketch is a Harry Potter inspired sketch, since Garamond is also the official font for all of JK Rowling’s books. I am a huge nerd and loved all of the books as a child which is why I really wanted to incorporate different elements of the series. The third sketch is inspired by Paris, since Claude Garamond developed the font in Paris in 1530. I wanted to go for an “old postcard” look, which would be portrayed along with an Eiffel Tower made of random scattered letters. The fourth and fifth sketches are quite similar in the sense that they use massive letters in the Garamond font and use the shape of the letters to position facts in a creative way. Of all five sketches, I had the clearest artistic vision for the postcard one, and I went ahead and created that on illustrator as well as the Harry Potter one.
Transferring to Illustrator
Once I developed both of the ideas on Illustrator, there were some modifications I made. For the Eiffel Tower Postcard poster, I initially wanted the Eiffel Tower to be made entirely of letters, but then decided to fade in an image of the Eiffel Tower. To achieve more of a postcard feel, I also added some sketches of gears and machinery in the background. After the interim crit, I took some feedback and made even more changes, including making the background more subtle to add dimension as well as changing the location of “Garamond.” For the Harry Potter one, though I didn’t present it in the interim crit, I definitely went through multiple iterations of it to come to my final concept, presented below.
After having two final versions (1, presented at the beginning of this post, and 2, above), I decided that the Eiffel Tower Postcard version was the most descriptive of the font itself rather than its applications. In the end, I am quite pleased with the result and am concluding the project with a variety of new Illustrator skills.
