alphabet soup: adobe illustrator workshop.

Yesterday, we were introduced to another brief, in which we would be extending and developing our original alphabet soup project, the brief reads:

Alphabet Soup- Illustrator:

The Brief:

Produce a series of 26 visual variations of based on one of the letterforms you created from the Alphabet Soup, Visual Thinking brief. You are restricted to using black and one colour as it is to be produced in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, key). Although you are restricted to one colour, you experiment with opacity and tones.

You should use your research and experience to date as well as your studio based visual investigations as a starting point. You will use Adobe Illustrator as a tool for visual investigation.

The Process:

THINK VISUALLY. Consider what the visual essence of your subject matter is and how best to communicate it. How can these letterforms that you created be developed further now that you are working digitally? The following terms may prove useful:

Trace, edit, layer, combine, outline, silhouette, positive/negative contrast.

MAKE MISTAKES IN ORDER TO LEARN FROM THEM.

Experimentation:

For this workshop the emphasis is on investigation and experimentation. You will develop a quantity of material that will allow you to maximise your understanding of the applications potential within the time available.

Considerations:

One of the problems with software is that everyone has access to it but not everyone knows how to use it creatively. Adobe Illustator is primarily used for the generation of vector-based images and as a type tool. When used as a means for visual investigation it offers the potential for rapid generation of visual variations. The possibilities of which can be used as a springboard for further visual research.

Mandatory Requirements:

In preperation for the first session you must (by scanning) digitise the series of ten letterforms from the Alphabet Soup, Visual Thinking original brief.

The 26 variations of the letterform must exsist in a 13x2 (two rows of 13) on A1 landcape.

From my selection of origianl series Alphabet Soup letterforms, I would say that these two are perhaps my favourite, however, I can't see either as being particularly strong to work with.

If I could go back, I certainly would have liked to have created more design ideas to produce a stronger outcome, as I'm sure that I will find this module difficult in the terms of manipulation of these designs (the top one representing atomic structures of elements, and the lower image representing chemical equations).

However, come our Adobe Illustrator induction throughout tomorrow's session, I will choose one of of these two designs to develop and manipulate, along with hopefully finding a strong and confident approach to the software, which, at present, is completely alien to me.

I can't wait to get started!