Journal #8

After reading the article about the abundance of Futura users, I had to look up the font to make sure I was thinking of the right Modern font. After looking at this font, I could see why so many people like Futura. It is not only easy to read, but also geometric looking, and one of the more widely distributed fonts of its time. Any one could look at Futura and know it is Futura. But, though it has made its mark on Typography, I do see the reason why Ms. Helfand was writing this article. I do agree with the point that you must have a reason to use a specific type that goes along with the purpose of the poster. Typography, along with images, need to be carefully placed on the poster, layout, bookcover, etc. because every element needs to work with each other to convey the purpose of the piece.

Some fonts that could be used instead of Futura are: possibly Gill Sans, maybe Rotis Sans, and possibly interstate. They keep within the same shapes and I can see the crossover from Futura to one of these fonts being pretty painless and not messing up the rest of the design (that is to say that you made sure the type went with the design.)

Other Article Read:

Designing Under the Influence

It is often a hard question to answer if being inspired by another's design work could be considered plagiarism. Can someone own a design style? I agree with the author that "no" is the correct answer for that question but how far is too far?

I have wondered if design has gotten to the point, where if you design something purely from your own brain, is there a dozen more designs out in the world like or nearly like that one design? The answer is probably yes, and that is the problem with plagiarism. I feel like this day and age, it is hard to draw the line, and probably, we will just have to trust people to come up with their own designs on the honor's system because ultimately, the people that do plagiarize, will get caught and it will ruin their career for good.

No sympathy.

Journal #7-- These are some of my pictures taken in France

Refined Series

More Graphic Design Poster Ideas

I changed around the birds in the first two. The first poster, I made a different type of bird. Its style is more like the turkey, cut and paste like, and with both bird posters, I lessened the amount of birds displayed.

I tried to do a clipping back with the type and the swirly texture, but somehow I couldn't figure out how to do that. I did see if it could be a pattern or texture in the back of the all-type poster. I think it looks okay.

The last poster, I made the house bigger but I didn't really change a lot except the typography and where it was and how it is placed, and its size.

Typography Workbook Part 2

Typography Workbook

Revision Number Two, Graphic Design Doves

I did make my own dove so it shouldn't look as much like the "Dove" soap logo. I also thought it might be a good idea to use the symbol I used in the pattern poster and see what it looked like in this type of poster. I would also put a URL on these posters like I did the other posters posted before.

First Spring Break Graphic Design Refinements

Persona #2: Non-traditional Student who knows something about Christianity. I wanted to look at incorporating larger text with the pattern posters. I really considered typography more than I have done in the past posters.

Journal #6 What inspires Designers?

I wanted to look at mostly women designers and what they said that was inspiring to them. I watched Ellen Lupton, Jennifer Morla, Monica Nassif, Paula Scher. I also noticed that Chip Kidd was one of the designers asked so I watched him also. I was expecting them to talk about a specific graphic design that inspired them, but one woman talked about how Madison Square Garden was her inspiration. Another woman talked about how a spoon was her inspiration. Chip Kidd was a little more off topic but got around to saying that much inspires him everyday. And I think all of the designers that I looked at were right. Graphic design is not the only thing that inspires more graphic design. I look at things, patterns, people, places everyday and that should or does inspire design as much as past design work. I feel like I need to look at the world more and not just as graphic design for more inspiration. There is only a limited amount with what you can do with already design items.

If I was to answer those two questions, I would say that journals, books inspire me. I love book designing, I love words I love typography and how one can use typography for design. I love journals, I love how personal they can get, and I think graphic design should have that personal feeling in it. When you look at a good design you should be able to get a taste of who the designer is. I think people need personal things in order to relate and to understand them. Very famous designers like Milton Glaser gives his posters that personal/relatable touch that people understand and feel also. His "I LOVE NY" poster does that.

What design should solve next is that disconnection that people have to the needs and wants of the world. A man in the United States is not affected by the Earthquake in Haiti so he has no drive to help out. If we build connections and make the world personal to all, I think we will understand and help out more. I truly think the world will be a better place.

Final Flight Poster

Final Poster

Project Description:

Establishing order: Graphic design often relies on typography to communicate order, information, and systems. The goal of this project is to make things easy to read, navigate and understand. As you learned in typography one, the foundation for creating an clear informational structure is a a strong typographic hiearchy. Type size, wieght, and color are the the first steps. Graphic elements (lines, arrows, grids) and page structure are often used to aid in establishing a clear hierarchy.

Overview:

Overall, I enjoyed this project. It went pretty quickly but I am happy with what I have to show for it. The first week was tough because what I was doing was not what I should have been doing. Ultimately, though, it did get me to my final project that I like a lot. I think it does look like a blueprint of the airplane, and I like the fact that I didn't even use an airplane for the timeline.

If I could change anything, I most likely would say that I would want more time, but somehow I feel like if I had more time on it, it might get worse? There is only so much you can do with a timeline and I feel like mine has reached its peak here. If I had more time, I would have overworked it. Simplicity is key.

I liked the fact that we all had a choice on what we wanted to do. I liked the fact that the topics of the timeline were all so very different that I know everyone is going to have a different design for their timeline. I also liked the fact that we have the option of doing a poster or an accordion book. Though I really wanted to make an accordion book, I feel like my design works better as a poster.

If I could do this again, I wouldn't change anything because I learned a lot and I do feel like I developed as a designer. I didn't use someone else's picture! I didn't need to steal a picture! yay! That was one of Bruce Mau's rules that I needed to work at and I feel like this project showed me that I can do a good design without utilizing a Google image.

Refined Poster for Typography Process Book

The first idea I worked with is trying to use the accordion book idea. I wanted to see if I could somehow find a way to use my tracing paper with this project. I learned how to print on it and I thought it looked really good.

This would be the regular paper that I print on and the tracing paper would have the dates on it and that would outline the plane. I like that idea of using layers a lot.

The next images are poster ideas.

The problem with these posters were where to place the dates. The dates are easy enough to follow until I put the rest of the dates on the other plane. It was also noted that they were way to busy. No hierarchy and no one knows where to start on the plane.

I did think about make using only one plane and putting the dates around it. So I did that.

And then I thought, well, why do I have to have that plane in the middle? Could it be a negative image that the text makes? So I took out the plane.

And amazingly, I liked it better without the plane than with. I guess less is more! ha! I showed all of these posters to my small group and they agreed with me. But, they didn't like the colors (or lack there of) I was using. They suggested a blueprint idea where the whole thing is blue and the type is white. I really liked the idea and that is where I found my final poster idea.

Timeline Process

After looking at several different photos for the History of Flight, I felt like I needed to make an accordion book. It could be an extreme horizontal timeline or vertical. The poster idea didn't interest me very much. I didn't think it went very well with what I wanted to focus on with the history of flight.

I talked to Andrea and I showed her my ideas about the wind patterns, drafting, and altitude and she thought that I should focus my attention on a draft idea. I was glad of her support with that one because I thought the drafting idea was my favorite idea and I didn't think as many people would think about that.

Next class I brought my ideas to Typography. Unfortunately, I think what happened with my designs is that my timeline focused too much on photos.

This would be the front cover on the accordion book. The "100 Years of Flight" and the plane would be the front and the rest would be folded over. When you opened this up you would see this:

Obviously as you can tell, it is way to many photos. This is the page that took FOREVER to print also. Sorry guys who were trying to print after me...

Another idea was using the same title page, but instead of a time line you see, you would open up the book and there would be little books inside that show the timeline dates for ten-year intervals

This is a very rough draft of what I was thinking about but I felt it got my point across.

Before I talked to Andrea that day, I started again to refine and think of things that I could do to make this more of a typographic project than a info-graphic project:

• more type than graphics you can use graphics but not as much
• drafting
• tracing paper
• lines, rulers, numbers
• as sketches, not pictures
• thick vs thin lines

Then I thought of maybe, I should use one large drafting image and using the lines within the structure of the airplane, I show the timeline. So the timeline would be apart of one airplane. I liked this idea better than using a lot of different images for so many different dates. I also thought utilizing thick and thin lines and rulers or a map key would also help make this more typographic.

Because I started to think more in this way, I asked Andrea if I should consider making posters instead of a book. She said that would be good, but the one problem with the posters is that I could not use the tracing paper to create layers that I would be doing with the accordion book.

The next day I came to class with more files that were primarily posters.

Beginning Process of Typography Timeline Project

At the beginning of this project, I immediately knew I wanted to design a timeline for the History of Flight. I have always wanted to learn how to fly and my boyfriend does fly, so planes have always been a part of my life. I connected with the History of Flight and with the help of my peers I started a list of items flight related that could demonstrate a timeline.

Word List:

airport graphic

early 1900s theme

purpose, i.e. war

basic structure

mechanical

drafting

technical

flight simulator

altitude

distance traveled

horizon line

dashboard

lift, drag

path, trajectory

runway

wings

cloud

birds (things that fly)

circle, engine

propeller

safety cards

rows of seats

how planes look over the years/morph

insects

wind patterns

man floating

Wright Brothers

captain hat

wings

log for flight

map

radar

connection lines

airport layout

cropped/window

aerial view, patterns

peanut, pretzel bags

lights aisle/ pathways

side of jets/windows

dandelions

arrows

focused on the people that flew

paper airplane

3-D makes itself into a paper airplane

Kite ribbon

layer drafting

Some of the questions that I thought about is, how to show time through flight. Could the time be linear? Could it be more info-graphic? Time vs Distance? I knew that because this was a Typographic project, I needed to steer clear of a more info-graphic approach. Some of the words in the word list would deal primarily with images more than type so I tried to steer clear of that.

The major ideas that I wanted to focus more on is the idea of using drafting to demonstrate the history of flight. I also liked the idea of using distance with a paper airplane idea. I also liked the idea of using altitude or using distance traveled up to measure a timeline. I also liked the idea of using wind patterns and arrows to show direction of the timeline. Some of the photo graphs I looked at for ideas are as followed: