I wanted to highlight a certain aspect of my typography in my upcoming Industrial Evolution book. The analog typography work I did for stress involved lots of layers of letters and words. For the overwhelming feeling of stress. Rather then cutting out the letters from white bond paper and pasting it on and copying the composition to get a perfectly flatten type composition; I used transparency paper cut it and overlapped the words to give me a seamless letter form and the mass of words I was looking for.
Most of the information I got for the history of my logo came from a wonderful 5 part (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) blog post from Todd Klein. In his entries he is focusing on the logo primarily in it's comic book format from Artist Bob Kane. This means it is typically in an illustrative fashion. As opposed by the refined version which I recreated from the Batman Movie (1989) directed by Tim Burton.
This symbol that represents the dark knight constantly goes through tons ofchanges, yet still retains the same basic characteristics. A sharp and rounded width bat form usually with two points at the top of the bats head.
As you can plainly see the logo of the comic seems to change according to the time period and which "batman" its representing.
The most iconic emblem people relate to batman was created in 1964, Detective Comics #327 introduces the Bat-logo as a yellow ellipse behind the insignia against the grey color of the batsuit after Julius Schwartz decided that the symbol with the yellow oval would make Batman look more contemporary (http://logoorange.com/logodesign-B.php)
The yellow and black combination of the logo represents the night in which batman does all of his hero-ing.
While we are looking at color and color theory I think it is important for us to not only understand its relationship with the world of graphic design but also how it interacts with other aspects of art and design. I hope watching these short videos by Gary Nadeau not only tingle your color palette but they are also beautifully crafted works of cinematography. Enjoy.
These are my initial compositions for the typography work in the Industrial Evolution book. Each of these compositions was done completely analog using the computer to only print out strips of the word for me to cut out and manipulate. Then once the type work was done I used the copier to make a duplicate which was glue and tape free, and looked much cleaner then the hand crafted ones. On the first stress composition I also used transparency paper to overlay the words rather then trying to cut each of them out perfect. These will be refined (soon) and trimmed down to the final 9, then copied to transparency paper to overlay on the dot compositions I am working on in Visual Communications. Then wire bond into a book. For the cover I will be using a very thin piece of aluminum sheet metal with a nice finish, and possibly stenciling or embossing the title. Much of the final work and documentation will probably be posted after completion because of time constraints.
Create a composition which metaphorically represents a word (Drown), analogy. I decided to use Futura because of its sharp peaks. This characteristic adds a dance like feeling to the letters when placed whimsically through-out the space in the composition. The cropping adds an in your face intrusive element that corresponds with the definition of the word. This allows the composition to actual engage with the viewer in a first person point of view.
Never before have I been able to create a color wheel to the exact specificity. Thank you CMYK. The 12 step color wheel, when done mathematically only needed the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. Then you can average those numbers to get the secondary colors, green, orange, and violet. Then once more if you average those averages you get the tertiary colors, yellow-green, red-orange, and blue-violet. Amazing what balancing the percentages of inks can accomplish.
As for the color harmonies, sure they are visually harmonious to most everyone. But those harmonies just aren't as apparent to me as they are people without CBS(color blindness syndrome). For instance complementary colors, meaning colors that are directly across from one another on the 12 step color wheel, don't seem equal in "contrast" or "vibration". Out of them all blue, orange, is the most "apparent" in its difference. While red and green seem extremely close ( again I am color blind). The same theory applies for split complementary, double complementary, analogous,and triadic. These harmonies are not actually harmonies they are perceived relations in color. The thing is these relations can easily break down, from color blindness, to different lighting while viewing, monitor calibration, and even different types of ink. The slightest variable change and the intended color expression is different. It's all perceptual.
