Typography Design Fall 2011

I had no idea what to expect from this class. But what a pleasant surprise it was. This class was challenging and lots of fun.

The first seven weeks were spent doing a weekly exercise. We were given a collection of 13 words/phrases that were suitable for a magazine cover.  The criteria for each week were:

• All work was to be done using either Helvetica or Arial font.
• All the given words/phrases needed to be used.
• Elements were to be given proper emphasis, i.e. the title, International Design, was to have more emphasis than the other elements.
• All designs were to be enclosed in a 7" x 7" white box.
• Each design was to be as different from the other four as possible
• Each week, all 5 new designs were to be as different as possible from any previous week's designs.

There were about 35 people in this class; all creating 5 designs per week from the same words and with the same criteria. It was amazing to see over 1000 designs created from the same limited data source.

  

Week #1

 8 Point Size/Regular Weight.

Week #2  

1 Size/2 Weights

 Week #3

2 Sizes/1 Weight

 Week #4  

2 Sizes/2 Weights

 Week #5

5 Different Sizes/1 Weight Per Size

 Weeks #6

 2 Sizes/2 Weights with Rules

 Week #7

 2 Sizes/1 Weight per Size/ Rules/ Reversals

After 7 weeks of exercises, we were ready to begin our projects.

 Project #1

Font Poster

Note: The white border around this image is a function of this blog site. It is not part of the design.

Project #2

Restyled Metro Map

I chose Athens.

This is the actual map for the Athens Metro

For my version, I redesigned the transfer station icons and used straight lines to

open things up a bit for easier reading.

Exercise

Text Boxes

This exercise introduced us to using blocks of text as design elements.

Project #3

Genre Poster

The first part of this project involved researching our chosen genre and presenting 20 different examples. Ours choices were a Circus Poster, a Blues Poster, a Rodeo Poster or a Boxing Poster.

We were then given font packages. The font provided for this project was outlined, so each letter had to be individually placed.

Note: The white border around this image is a function of this blog site. It is not part of the design.

Final Project

Magazine Re-Design

Our final project was to redesign  elements of an actual magazine.

The first step was to search magazine racks for a publication.

The second step taught us about the use of grids.

We were allowed to design for any page size. I chose to work with a 10 x 12 inch canvas and quickly became a familiar face at my local Kinko's.

 Note: The white border around these images is a function of this blog site. It is not part of the design.

The Cover

Department #1

Department #2

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