KRYPTON MONOGRAM

Here is some process of the process for creating a monogram for the element Krypton, which is represented by the letters KR.  The two main topics I was trying to communicate was the stability of the element and it's natural gaseous form.  I chose the top monogram as my final version because of the organic directionality of each arm and leg of the K and R, while the serifs and stability so does the symmetry of the form as a whole.  Soon we will be taking a trip to SKYLAB letterpress and all of our classes monograms will be printed on a card while we will get to observe the process of a letterpress in today's culture.

TYPEFACE

Kansas City AIGA, A REEL DESIGN FILM SERIES, hosted TYPEFACE a film about the Hamilton wood type museum in North East, Two Rivers, Wisconsin.  The film addresses the struggle of a dying practice of wood type printing.  The digressing nature of a experiential process, the efficiency of printing with wooden type blocks is getting overthrown by the speed of the modern computer.  The intent of this film seems to be to aware the public of the wonders and connections someone can make with ink and wooden letter forms.  Yet seems to be distracted by the characters established in the film.  Dennis Ichiyama  a professor at Purdue, is one of these characters, along with the curator of the museum and former employees.   Overall I feel as if the film was not as successful at pulling people into the museum because of its ability to (unintentionally?) highlight the negative aspects of the small town of Two Rivers, Wisconsin.  The home of the ice cream sundae.  Not to mention the "main character" the museums curator quits his job to take up painting.  But a trip would be nice for a day or two, just to experience the history of how my practice came to be what it is today.  Not to mention it was good to see that a large majority of the audience was KCAI affiliated, and a majority of those were typography 1 students.

KRYPTON

I am Creating a symbol for the element Krypton, Kr 36

CAVITY

Third Reese's bitmat font.

CANDY DANDY

Second Bitmap Font created by Reese's.

SWEET TOOTH

First bitmap font formed out of Reese's.

FIELD TRIP!

The BUCHSTABEN MUSEUM in Berlin is a gallery museum full of found typography!  You should definitely put it on your to-do list when in Germany

DIE HAAS NEUE GROTESK

I find it very interesting that this type face which was designed to have such a universal application to words, That by the 70's it turns into a conformity of sameness.  Something that has come out of Idealism, by this point, is merely routine.  The original designers hadn't developed the type face to go through this manipulation of meaning.  But because of it's universality it has brought that upon itself.

Then this type face has its neutral and efficient characteristics so companies use it to seem accessible, transparent, and accountable to the public.  The thing is that they don't have to be accessible, transparent, and accountable but they can look that way.  I feel that is very offensive, being subconsciously lied to and manipulated to feel a certain way.

INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION BOOK

Industrial Evolution:  An exploration of abstract communication and text and image.  This book is the final product of a collaboration of Typography 1 & Visual Communication.  The Typography was printed on transparency paper, and layered on top of the dot compositions which were created in Visual Communications.  The theme of my book is deindustrazation. 

The 9 representing words I chose to represent the theme, were:
Utilitarian, with symmetry, to represent the "sameness" feeling that utilitarian expresses.

Creation, In which I used A-symmetry to balance the composition visually.  This also has a nice contrast from the centered symmetrical composition the viewer just witnessed.

Demanding, In demanding I used scale to allow the larger dot to have a sense of,"look at me!, Look at me! I'm front and center."  This shift in scale really draws the viewers attention to the center dot, as does the break in the pattern of smaller dots in a line.

Force.  Here I am relying on the proximity of the form to the frame.  The forms heavy nature also rely on the viewers natural knowledge of gravity.  The moment just before impact.  The force is only moments away of occurred.  

Friction.  Here I I am using an graphical representation of the tight framing seen through a lens, to isolate the action of friction.  The dot is grinding along the edge of the larger dots which contain the smaller one with no place to go.

Stress.  A radial line movement away from the center of the composition makes the viewer unease.  The correspondence of scale separates the dots into a group which is dependent of the other.  With out this scale shift it would seem as if these two elements  they would seem as one compound shape.

Complexity.  Looking at the pipework found in factory I again used scale correspondence to separate the single forms in the composition , but in this case the change in scale also add depth to the 2 dimensional space.  

Capacity.  Literally filling the space with a uniform dot with uniform spacing. With out the perfection of size and space the "odd mans out" become the attention grabbers, and then the viewer searches for another meaning, and meaning that the design didn't include.  

Deteriorate.  I am representing temporally in a single graphic.  The passing of time from top to bottom, from perfection to destruction all in a linear fashion. It A-symmetry also adds the tension between the perfection and destruction, through the perfection of bright clean white surface while aganist a manipulated surface.  

Within the compositions we also included imagery.  To alter or support our theme/ our personal view on it.

Utilitarian is only drawing the viewer into this mindset of industry and sets the tone for the type of images you would expect to see throughout the rest of the book.  But then on the second page things start to change.  

With creation, I am highlighting the removal of humans in the industrial environment and replacing them with robots who are capable to do the mans job.  

In Demanding I wanted to relay my opinion for the need of retail stores like walmart and target.  This need is soley based off the america need for cheap stuff.  If you have cheap stuff, you sell stuff. The concept of supply and demand with comsumerism is represneted by the agressive bull at Wall Street.  

The Force in the book is representing the force of the companies to expand to outsourcing jobs in different, cheaper countries, in-order to keep up with the American need for goods.  

Friction, uses the imagery of a working man and a chain locked door (to signify a closed factory), while a smaller dot grinds against the larger ones.  The litter dot has an image of the great depression in which a line of unemployed men are getting free soup.  

The stress mainly uses the sharpness of the color yellow surrounding a lone image of a depressed man.  

Complexity intertwines all of the negative aspects that I have touched on in the book into a single composition.  

Capacity uses the imagery of landfill and American garbage reflecting on the unnecessary waste of American culture.  

Deteriorate uses imagery of urban decay from the city of Detroit a major victim of deindustrilization in the United States.

Some things that could have been different about this book would probably be the stress page.  The connection between the two compositions are terrible.  They have no connection compositionally and the interaction between them spatially is confusing.  Also the craft was difficult to have a high level of cleanliness because of the small size of the dots.  Thus the glue probably shows in a couple of the more intricate pages.




For all of the Images of the final artifact look at this