MY FINAL POSTER: WORD VOMIT
This is my final poster. After a series of experiments and research, I was able to create this poster for my quote, "Word Vomit". The letters began as hand drawn images, and the letter that create the words, "Word Vomit" are made from photographs I took of food.
Above is an image of my final piece. It took a lot of experiments and research to get to this stage but the outcome has been a success.
After getting the brief for the project, I began to research different types of typography. I created various mood boards, as a way of presenting what I had found. I saw that typography is used in many advertisements, posters, and promotions. Researching typography helped me to find the types of typography I liked and the ones which stood out to me. I really liked the works of artists such as Rob Ryan and Oscar Wilson. Rob Ryan using intricately cut paper designs and patterns to create images, but also incorporates typography through his hand-cut designs. His designs really stood out to me, as they look quite delicate, and his style is quite unique. I wanted to have a go out trailing with Ryan’s style of work, so I used a scalpel to hand-cut into paper to create an image of a mouth with my name within. Using the stencil type design I created, I went into a photography darkroom, and using the equipment I was able to create monochrome copies of the designs I created. I enjoyed this process and considered incorporating this into my final designs, because the effects it created look really good.
Looking into the work of artists such as Heebok Lee, Si Scott and Rob Ryan helped me to practice experimenting with different typography. As they each use different mediums to present their work I was able to carry out trails using a range of objects. This was very useful, as I was able to see what methods work best for me, and what mediums would be the most effective way to present my work.
Through researching Oscar Wilson’s calligrams, I learnt more about calligrams. I really liked Wilson’s style and designs, and trailed out my own calligram. Creating a calligram, then developing in Adobe Illustrator, taught me more about how to use Adobe Illustrator, and how to use the various tools within the programme. This practice had a great impact on my final piece, as a lot of it was done in Adobe Illustrator.
Ed Ruscha is a fine artist who used usual objects within his typography pieces. I went on to experimenting with food typography, using objects such as bread, baked beans, cereal and cucumber to create words. In my final piece I used food to create the different letters in the phrase, “word vomit”. Each letter was created from photographs I had taken of food such as pineapple, grapes and ham. I wanted the letters to look quite unusual as the phrase “word vomit” sounds quite disgusting, so I hand drew the letters scanned them into the computer, and used Adobe Illustrator to merge the photography and the letter. I used the clipping mask tool to do this.
After some research, began creating initial ideas of what I want as a phrase for my typographical poster. I came up with three, “Word Vomit”, “Bang Bang He Shot Me Down” and “Your Heart is my Piñata”. I liked all three of these phrases and I could visualise all being would effective. For each I carried out trails, to practice creating a typographical poster. For each of the phrases, I hand-drew some designs and then scanned them into the computer allowing me to use Adobe Illustrator to edit them further. I also collected images of previous typography work I have found for each phrase.
Artists Thomas Cheng and Sarah King, both influence my “Your Hear Is My Piñata” design. They both used objects in their piece to create meaning. King wrote on fruit, and this inspired me to go on and write on an animal heart the word piñata. The use of the heart was influenced by Cheng as in his piece, ‘I Love You’ he uses a real heart to represent the word love. I like this style of work, so I went on to producing pieces of my own, with the words piñata written on a real animal heart. I really like how this came out, but if was neater I think it would have wrote better, so the letters written on the heart were more defined and clearer.
The work ‘Fontface’ by artists Atipo, were really beautiful. I really like their work, as it was unique and very skilful. Their work really stood out to me, inspiring me to create my own fontface. I used black and white paint to create a triangle and explanation mark on the face of my subject. I was able to practicing creating typography on real people. I enjoyed this experiment, but I do not think I turned out that well. The lines could have been more clear, and neater, so the work looked more professional. After doing this experiment I did another trail incorporating my Thomas Cheng, Sarah King and Atipo inspired work. I photographed this.
Looking at various examples of typography from research I conducted into different font and typefaces, I was able to see what type of typography was used and when. I saw that typography can often suggests a theme or emotion, and when used in magazines the typography used relates to the type of message they are trying to put across. I learnt about typefaces and fonts, such as sans-serif, and castine italics, allowing me to look into what would work best for my final design.
After various trails, I decided that the phrase “word vomit” would work best for my typography poster. I began to research different work and came across the work of ‘Damagedinnocence’ who created a piece called ‘Typography makes me vomit’. I really liked this work, and the use of only two colours, but the presentation and layout of his overall piece was what proved really effective to me. ‘Damagedinnocence’ influence my “word vomit” typography poster, as I went on to experimenting firstly with hand-drawn design of word vomit, which progressed (after I scanned it into the computer), into my final piece. I used Adobe Illustrator’s live trace tool, to colour to letters, and make them more vibrant. With various trails, I found what colours and design suited my phrase best.
I liked the typography I created, but wanted to add something more to it, so looked into photography. I took numerous portrait photographs of subjects, and decided that this one with the girl with her mouth open worked best. With the typography and her pose, it could look like she was vomiting the letters, so I decided to use this specific photograph. I went on to using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to edit the photograph, changing the contrast levels. I began with a coloured image, and trailed making collaging the image. I cut the image into different sized vertical stripes, and stuck them on black paper, so the image looked collaged and distorted. I liked this effected but did not use it in my final piece, because I think it would distract the typography. I used black and white photography instead of colour, so the background photography would not be distracting to the typography. I wanted the typography to stand out, so wanted a good image as the background, but not too bright so it would not be too busy distracting from the typography.
The combination of coloured and bright typography upon black and white photography really works effectively because the typography can stand out. I like the final outcome of this project, and all the experiment and research I done prior to creating the final piece proved very useful.
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