Project Two :: Progress

Friday, 26 February

in class

• campaign idea discussion
• studio

homework

• develop billboard and bus directions for progress crit on Monday
• hang significant work on wall (but bring all with you) before class begins

Projekt Two :: Applications

Monday, 22 February

in class

• quick crit expressive type
• photoshoppery
• studio

homework

• refine and combine your series of expressive compositions
• start applying your work in a campaign (see below)

Take your composition series and apply them to a news channel ad campaign.
The following media will be explored:

• Billboard advertising : Bulletin size : 14' x 48'
• Television interstitial: aspect ratio 4:3 / 640 * 480 pixels
• Bus wrap around: sides 479" x 102" / back 81" x 102"

Work at a realistic scale in Illustrator:
Billboards 1:40
Bus 1:40
Interstitial 1:1 (640 * 480 pixels)

Your first steps will be to pick a station (CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS) and create the campaign text. Based on your word choices, the subject can be either "weather reporting" or "24 hour news coverage". Come up with a short, memorable tagline.

Campaign content should include:

• Compositions
• Station logo and descriptor (CNN Weather or CNN News)
  
• Ad message / tagline
  
• optional: Channel number (i.e. "Channel 164")
• optional: time, i.e. "Every hour on the hour." or "5:20am / 6:20am / 7:20am"

Television interstitial content should include:

• Compositions
• Station logo and descriptor (CNN Weather or CNN News)
• Ad message/tagline

Considerations

• Intergrating text and graphics into the compositions
  Take your content and try to integrate it with your compositions. How will you do this and keep the main information legible? You can split your frame, overlay bands of color, feather and fade, etc. to create legible space for logo and text. You could also try to integrate directly into the compositions, but that would be tough to pull off. With heavy image and little content, Illustrator and Photoshop should be you main tools for the ads, Flash for the interstitial.
  
  
• Making content legible for your format
  Billboards, buses and interstitials are all QUICK-READ formats. The viewer only gets a few seconds to understand the information. How do you ensure the station identity and main text are LEGIBLE and MEMORABLE.
  
  
• Creating narrative
  Billboards & Buses: do you integrate all your compositions in the format or only one? How about 4 successive billboards or 4 different busses? That would extend the narrative for the audience. All 4 could nicely wrap around a bus for a compelling narrative.
  Interstitial: What is the order of reveal for your compositions? Try to make the order sensible. How do they transistion from one to the other?

Project Two :: More Experimentation

Friday, 19 February

in class

• look at some expressive typography
• look at your expressive typography
• make some expressive typography

homework

• keep making expressive typography, bring all to experiments to class
• from all your experiments, create a harmonic series of 4 compositions that fit well together, hang these four up together on Monday
• post found example/s of expressive typography to our Find & Share post

Project Two :: Experimentation

Monday 15 February

In a series of typographic compositions, communicate 4 separate weather phenomena. From the supplied list, choose 4 of the weather phenomena and (at least) 6 supplemental words that describe the weather pattern from their respective thesaurus entries. Your descriptive choices can be single words, phrases, or series of words. Try to pick 4 phenomena that form an interesting narrative, i.e.: CLOUDY/LIGHTNING/THUNDER/RAIN.

Using the words as a descriptive “poem,” create experiments that communicate the action of your chosen word. No images can be used, only typography. What you do with that typography is OPEN, very OPEN. Experiment with your type, print it, cut it, xerox it, repeat it, illuminate it, project it, paint it or paint with it, make it out of mud, out of ketchup, etc., etc. Try not to “draw” literal pictures with your typography, but work semi-abstractly. As a well known (to you at least) professor (yours) once said (just now), “Why be literal when you can be abstract and have MO’ IMPACT!?” Attempt to create a rich, interpretive experience and have fun! That’s a command.

Methods
Set the words you will be using in Illustrator or InDesign and print them out. Work with your printouts in experimental ways and work with digital type in in Illustrator and Photoshop. Try out insane physical alterations of your type. Cut up the words, shine light through them, rephotograph them, rearrange them, repeat them, drag, squiggle and shift them across the copy machine as it copies. Make your weather phenomena word stand out in some manner from the descriptive terms. The main word should have the most dominance hierarchically. Please choose typefaces with care, they should emphasize and support the weather ideas. Does Univers 39 look like rain? Does Chaparral look like raindrops?

homework
Create a series of word-manipulation experiments. Initial experiments should fit on an 11" x 17" page, black and white. Bleed (work beyond the barriers of the format) your compositions, it will be important for the secondary stage of this project. On Friday, bring 3 versions of each, for a total of 12 comps.
Copy, scan or mask your compositions (dependent on your media and process) and present as shown in the attached sheet, no mounting. Keep originals with bleed for next steps.

Project Two :: Expressive Typography

Description
Create a campaign for a television news station. Our subject matter is weather. You will apply experimental typography along with station identity and other information to billboards, bus wrap-around ads, and television interstitials.

Objectives

* Investigate typography’s ability to communicate in expressive ways
* Create emotive typography that tells multi-layered stories
* Create typography that communicates visually AND verbally
* Explore “simultaneity” of visual phenomena through overlapping & transparency
* Experiment with analog and digital methods of altering typography
* Integrate experimental form making in practical applications
* Work fluidly across a range of media

Considerations, research ideas
How can typography look like rain? How can typography be parched? How can a word appear foggy? Inspiration: Apollinaire, Peter Cho, David Carson, typophoto, Laszlo Moholy-nagy, Wolfgang Weingart, Ralph Schraivogel, F.T. Marinetti and Futurism, dada, Martin Venesky, Sagmeister...

Project One :: Finalizing your poster

in class

• photoshoppery
• introduce new project
• finish your poster, submit your poster

Entry guidelines can be found here:
http://clash.aigablueridge.org/enter.php

homework

• see new project posts

Project One :: Refinements

Mondy 8 February

in class

• demo: accessing your subdomain, uploading files
• discuss revisions since crit
• studio time

homework

• refine your best direction/directions
• bring tiled, full color version of your best to next class

Project One :: Major Revisions

Friday 5 February

in class

• with Epp: discuss directions and ways of image representation and how to present this afternoon
• present poster for critique with Steve Frykholm

homework

• revise directions based on feedback from Steve, me, and anyone else in the room for critique
• post revisions to your blog and place on the wall before the start of class Monday. I expect iterations, scale change, experimentation with how your type and image interact and tell a story
• write a post on your blog about Design Process by Philip Meggs. Did this reading chage your viewpoint on the design process? How do you think the process your are developing at school compares to the process Meggs lays out? Do you think this will be applicable in the working world when you get out there and start designin' for pay?

Project One :: Design Process

Monday 1 February

in class

• discuss directions and ways of image representation
• studio time

homework

• if you haven't gathered a mountain of info and images on and about your theme, do it
• read Design Process, from Type & Image by Phillip Meggs
• design, design, design
• bring black and white printouts of your directions, and 1 color printout of your best direction/version to discuss with Steve Frykholm from Herman Miller!