TYPOGRAPHY - TASK 3B

June 20, 2021

TYPOGRAPHY - TASK 3B

June 7th - 22nd June (WEEK 11 - WEEK 13)
NG VEYHAN (0349223) / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
TYPOGRAPHY
TASK 3B

Instruction

Practical

During the first week, we were assigned to sketch up some very basic ideas for our stickers. The design should be text-centric while also reflecting the spirit of the holiday that we had chosen, or in my case which was Easter. With that in mind, I created multiple designs for how I could go about it.

(Fig 01, First Mockup, 8/6/2021)

(Fig 02, Second Mockup, 8/6/2021)

(Fig 03, Third Mockup, 8/6/2021)

These designs weren't very expressive and I felt that it was difficult to arrange the text in a way that could involve a minor graphic of an egg or a rabbit, elements that were reminiscent of the Easter holiday. I went for a design that involved a more graphical element, which was cutting it a little close but I felt made the best result.

(Fig 04, Fourth Mockup, 8/6/2021)

I had gotten the green-light to continue with the concept of having the text in the egg. While the mockup had very badly arranged text, I could continue and experiment with arranging the text in the egg to create a more appealing result. I tried to use an element of a ribbon to help convey the text, thus I created some rough sketches to see how to arrange it.

(Fig 05-07, Ribbon Egg Mockups, 10/6/2021)

I decided to go with the first basic design I had created as I felt that it had the best composition by limiting the amount of negative space while keeping the text the most legible out of the three. The others had text that were overly distorted to remain easy to read.

Moving into Adobe Illustrator, I began to work on building upon the basic sketch to create a more refined design for the final sticker. First I had to decide on a colour palette. Looking up the colours for Easter, it is best represented by bright saturated colours such as blues, pinks and purples. Looking for combinations on a colour wheel, I came across a useful little colour chart.

(Fig 08, Colour Chart, 12/6/2021)

Creating an egg shape was the very first step, as it'll serve as the base for the rest of the elements that would be added later on. Adding a gradient colour to the egg wasn't difficult, but it did take a little fiddling around in order to get it to rotate to the correct angle parallel to the vertical orientation of the egg.

(Fig 09, Adding Colour to The Egg, 12/6/2021)

One of the requirements of the sticker we had to design was the inclusion of the Taylor's University logo. This was easily achieved by tracing out an image that was downloaded from the internet. The colour was changed to better reflect the theme of the image.

(Fig 10, Drawing the Logo, 12/6/2021)

Afterwards, I began to add the ribbons to the egg. All that was required was to create a large stroked path with two smaller strokes to accent the ribbons. The ribbon would then be cropped by using a clipping mask to create a clipping group with the cropped ribbon. One benefit of this method is the ability to move the ribbon around due to the non-destructive nature of the mask.

(Fig 11, Ribbon Clipping, 12/6/2021)

After completing the first version of the sticker, I had it consulted in class. Mr. Vinod said that the concept is there and the graphical element was acceptable, however the arrangement of the text could still use more work as the first version had a lot of negative space in various parts of the egg.

(Fig 12, First Sticker Attempt, 12/6/2021)

Referring to the sketches I made previously to consider alternate arrangements of the text, I decided only a minor correction was in order as the rest of the designs I made before were still overly unsuitable. I decided to widen the ribbons considerably and change the font that was used, keeping the Serifa typeface.

(Fig 13, Testing New Fonts, 15/6/2021)

In the end, I had trouble deciding whether I should go for a condensed font with lower vertical height or a less condensed font with higher vertical height, which would fill the ribbon better. Eventually I settled with the latter and completed the sticker.

(Fig 14, Alternate Final Sticker, 15/6/2021)

(Fig 15, Final Sticker Design, 15/6/2021)

After completing the PNG file of the sticker, we had to create a Telegram sticker with said file. Porting it over to my mobile phone with Google Drive, creating the sticker pack wasn't too difficult. Mr. Vinod had also helped troubleshoot some importing problems for the sticker beforehand, therefore I was aware of the little details.

(Fig 16, Creating the Sticker, 16/6/2021)

Testing out the sticker was also very straightforward, as I just messaged a family member and saw that it displayed properly. There didn't seem to be any issues and therefore I considered the sticker complete.

(Fig 17, Testing the Sticker, 16/6/2021)

PDF submission:

PNG submission:

Feedback:

Week 11: The first few sketches I made were not very expressive, and could be improved. In the second feedback session, Mr. Vinod commented that the concept of having the text in the egg is strong and I should build from that, though the initial composition was quite mediocre.

Week 12: I had created the first pass at the sticker, Mr. Vinod said that the composition of the egg was a little uneven and that I should find a way to reduce the amount of negative space in the egg, as that was the main focus of the sticker.

Week 13:

Reflection

Week 11: While a sticker looks simple at first glance, quite a lot of thought has to be put in when creating a decent sticker, as opposed to simple cropped joke stickers. I found it easy to just sketch out a lot of random ideas off the top of my head and then think harder in deciding which design to use.

Week 12: The execution of the sticker itself is relatively easy. Instead, I spent quite a while mulling over which composition would be the most visually appealing, even though the changes were actually quite minor. Perhaps in this case, less is more when it comes to changes,

(Fig 18, The Complete Manual of Typography Second Edition, 2003)

The contents of this book might be a little less relevant to the content of this current task, however I felt that it contains very useful information for creating typefaces and fonts, or more specifically the technology behind typefaces.

(Fig 19, Explanation of Unicode, page 62)

The book gives a very clear and concise explanation of the workings of unicode and how it interacts with various type of programs. Something new I've learned was the possibility of including different variations of a single glyph into one font package.

(Fig 20, Examples of Alternate Fonts, page 61)

The book elaborated further on these "expert set" fonts and their ability to support over the initial 256-character limit before OpenType and TrueType font packages were introduced. Interestingly, some of these older "expert sets" aren't compatible with certain Unicode utility tools due to their age predating the system.

The technological aspects of typography presented in this book are quite interesting as it provided me quite a lot of insight of the abilities and limitations of type design currently, all while keeping the information in a digestible, easy-to-follow manner. I was able to skim through this book with relative ease due to its lack of complicated jargon, which kept my attention throughout my readthrough.

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NG VEYHAN (349223)