Final Poster(s)

I am not happy with my results for the above poster at all. I feel that I executed my vision for it very badly. I wanted much, much more dramatic lighting behind the 3D lettering, something that would resemble the sun coming up behind stone-henge and give sort of a dramatic visual fanfare. The traingle feature in the centre was supposed to be like a "wow" factor that broke up the lettering and made the poster eye catching and memorable, which it does anything but.  

Very unimpressed with myself indeed there.

This was a design I came up with using my final piece from the first task. I find it to be well balanced and aesthetically pleasing, in a harmless, inoffensive, playing it safe kind of way, but think it lacks any imagination.

Final Piece

Although completely contrary to my initial plans I settled on the layout below. The main image was a photo taken when I was testing arrangements for the lettering and, although I took very little care with the lighting, shutter speed or aperture settings, I think it has turned out rather well. It wasn't something I had thought of, but I quite like having my battered desk and some stationary in shot as a visual cue for an office or workshop setting - a reference to paper use at its grass roots.

From a technical perspective I did relatively little to it in Photoshop. I was happy with the colours so just left them as they were in the original photo and used the Burn tool to soften the edges so that they faded to black more gradually.

The biggest problem was that the photo had been taken in the early stages before i realised my spelling error and altered the H to and F. I used the Clone Stamp tool to erase the H using the texture of the desk, then formed an F by "cutting" up parts of the other letters using the Lassoo tool. I had to use the Clone Stamp tool again to match the lighting and produce what I think is a pretty seamless result.

Spot the difference!

More test layouts

I wanted to try out a little experiment based on Ryan Reigner's indented lettering (see "Paper Typography" post).  I thought that my poster might benefit from some bright colours, so I drew equilateral triangles onto cheap coloured paper, each one slightly smaller than the last but each with the same mid-point. I then mounted these beneath one another with a thick (but not, in retrospect, thick enough) cardboard frame seperating each one to give depth. Although I wasn't exactly giddy with happiness with the result I decided that the cheap, low quality paper was more to blame than the idea or the methods, so I made it again with expensive, high quality card the next day. And it still didn't make the final cut (pun not intended)!

Type Layouts

Experimenting with some different layouts for my type (before i realised my spelling error!)

Not GF SMITH

I decided to have a go at some intricate cut out lettering similar to that of Rob Ryan, so having already made "100 YEARS" in 3d, I made "OF GH SMITH" in 2d. Once again, it was quite painstaking and it wouldn't be until the next morning that I realised my error and that I should have written GF Smith instead.  I nearly cried. Rather than starting over though, I simply cut the H in half and glued some bits on to turn it into an F. Problem solved, for now...

Ripping off Tobias Sommer

I really liked Tobias Sommer's 3d lettering and figured it would be relatively quick and painless to try my hand at it myself. I was wrong. 

Happy enough with my 10cm large numbers i decided to make the next word, "YEARS" slightly smaller. This is where it got painstaking and fiddly, especially when i was trying to make an E and an S, not the easiest letters to make nets for. Anyway, I persisted and by the end of the evening had finally made "100 YEARS" and it felt as though it thad taken that long.

Paper Typography

Rob Ryan

Julene Harrison

Chris Berthe

Rodney King

Ryan Reigner

Shaz Madani

Tobias Sommer

Yulia Brodskaya

Wings/ Task 1 Final piece

I accidentally sat on one of "cathedral" pieces and noticed how with a squint of the eye and a bit of imagination I could see the beginnings of a winged shape forming. I felt really inspired for the first time in this project and decided that would be an avenue i could really enjoy pursuing, so I started looking at different types of wing.

The feather formations are pretty similar in each of the examples above and can be simplified to one  row of short feathers followed by one row of long feathers on each wing. 

I started to adapt my "cathedral" mock-up a bit and soon had something that resembled wings:

I was pretty happy with this, but i just felt that the wings should be spread out more majestically rather than in such a swooping position. I made a few more prototypes varying the angles of the folds joining the longer "feathers" to the shorter ones before I finally had a net i was happy with. I then scaled the dimensions of the net up to suit A1 size paper and set about it with my scalpel.

Final Piece

This is the first full scale net I made. It took me over 2 1/2 hours to measure it out and score each individual fold (including the pleats, though you can't tell in the picture because I hadn't actually folded them in yet) and was just thinking how well it was going and how close to completion I was when I realised that I was following the wrong line to cut the feather tips, had ruined the whole thing (it is an exact science) and needed to start over. Damn. 

But I got there in the end