Surface and Meaning: Graphic Design Workshop Reflection

How did you respond to the process of translating the text from your conversation into a typographic communication?

Rephrasing and paraphrasing the sentence to a quote was pretty easy as there was already a reference to what you needed to work on. I think creating the layout for the text and the transformation of the quote to typographic communication was a lot of fun as I got to be creative with the way I wanted to present it. Finding a window in my home was hard as there was a lot of curtains and stickers around it already so I had to find a pure clear window that I could use to stick on the typography. I thought cutting up the words would be a lot easier than expected but it was actually quite hard as it was time-consuming and I spent most of my time cutting up the texts three times to create the 3D effect. I didn’t have much time to stick on the typography onto the window as there was a time deadline so I rushed that part a bit. But excluding the rush and cutting up the texts being time-consuming the whole workshop and the translation of texts was really fun and I learned a lot about the presentation of texts by using sizes, scale, fonts and the use of capitals in the texts.

What were your considerations in relation to the layout, material and placement of your text?

My quote was “Hope is Illusory”, the idea of illusory with the combination of hope reminded me of a euphoria aesthetic as it was something that represented extreme happiness and exaggerated in pathological states as mania. With the euphoria aesthetic, I also wanted to add a psychedelic effect to emphasise the state of illusion. Which lead me to create a 3D layout of fonts. I used red and blue coloured paper and white plain paper to create this. I would place the blue cut out fonts shifted to the left and upwards and the red-shifted down and right to create the 3D effect. I stuck the texts onto the window as I wanted to involve a reflection of the texts on the other side as it also emphasised the state of an illusion. I put on purple, red and blue lights to create the euphoria aesthetic and took some photos of the typography. I felt as if the illusion effect didn’t come out as much so I tried taking photos with flash. The flash helped emphasise the view on the texts on the reflection but it still didn’t have that euphoria illusion-like aesthetic so I tried taking a flash photo and creating a movement with the camera - shaking it upwards, downwards, left, right, zig-zag and in a circle. The outcome for those photos turned out closer to what I wanted as it had the delay of the typography, the reflection, the colour and the message of typography.

How successfully do you think your text communication was? Does it function as you intended?

I think it was pretty successful as the texts without edits created the illusion-like effect and gave off the psychedelic euphoria aesthetic. To improve, I think I should edit the photos more and cut off the ceiling that is able to be seen in the photos as it stops the effect of the illusion.

What were the benefits and challenges of working with type in a non-digital way?

The challenges of working with type in a non-digital way are its time-consuming, once you mess up you can’t undo it and if you completed the typography and you didn’t like the scale you would have to redo it from scratch.

The benefits of working with type in a non-digital way are you get to interact and place down precisely where you want the typography to go and you can move it around in different locations if you didn’t like the original location. Working non-digitally also helps you see the work in front of you which is better when you want to see the mistakes and understand how to improve it.

Reflection

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