Alphabet Soup

Brief

Produce a set, series or sequence of ten letterforms that explore and communicate your interpretation of the word 'layers'. 

Using your newfound appreciation of the anatomy of typographic forms and wealth of research, focus on the manipulation of existing letterforms in order to solve this problem. 


Background/ Considerations

Think visually. Consider what the visual essence of your subject matter is and how best to communicate this. What are the obvious responses? How subtle can you be? Do your ideas operate as a set, series or sequence? 

Useful terms: Trace, erase, layer, combine, outline, silhouette and surface. 



Before we started this brief we were given a task to list as many groups that we thought we could categorise the type we collected in.  The list we devised was: 

• Serif 
• Sans-Serif 
• Upper Case 
• Lower Case 
• Hand made 
• Digital 
• Italic 
• Bold 
• Thin 
• 3D
• Photography 
• Script 
• Colour 

From this list we chose to categorise all our type in coloured groups so that we could not only have all the type put into groups but also so the overall outcome when on the table forms a picture. 

This is a quick sketch done by Adam to represent how we split the typefaces into the 10 different groups/colours. We created a circle because we thought that would produce the best visual picture of the colours fading. 

This was the final outcome of separating are type into coloured groups, this process helped us to look closer at the type, noticing the slight difference between some typefaces that may be extremely similar. Also looking at typefaces that are very different and why they may be so different. I feel it helped me to see how many different ways there are to create and use type and how a slight difference to a letter can completely change how it is viewed /how it looks. 

My Selection of letters

This is my collection of letters that i collected over summer, these are what helped to form the circle show above. I tried to collect a range of different types of letters, from shopping bags, roads signs, cardboard boxes, magazines, books ect! 

After this we then at random picked a piece of paper out a jar to reveal our word that is to be used to help produce 10 letterforms in black and white, that have to fit within a 10x10 square.  

The word i selected was: 

LAYERS 

Collins English Dictionary definition: 'Layer, single thickness of some substance, as a cover or coating on a surface; laying hen; shoot of a plant pegged down or partly covered with earth to encourage root growth > form a layer; propagate plants by layers'. 

Thesaurus: 'band, bed, blanket, coat, coping, couch, course, cover, film, flag, flap, floor, fold, girdle, lamina, lamination, lap, mantle, overlap, overlay, panel, ply, row, seam, sheet, slab, story, stratum, stripe, substratum, thickness, zone.'   

RESEARCH

I choose to look at these 3 images because they provided good examples of ways to layer 2 images together, although i am restricted to just using black and white i feel there could be a way to apply what has been done here to my letters. 

 

This is another example of how layering can be effective, in a different way to the one shown above, its not as simple and has more going on but still creates a interesting image.

  
These pictures i feel again have been layered in a way i might be able to incorporate into my own work. I really like the composition and how the colour changes depending on what is in front or behind it. I could do this but with different shades of grey towards black.

New Vintage type, Classic Fonts For The Digital Age

This is the book i used to gather the examples shown above, i have displayed it because i think the cover was amazing and each letter of the alphabet had its own visual quality.