alphabet soup task 2, week 1 critical analysis

Week 1 critical analysis and review

After several days of uncertainty and confusion as to where my project was taking me, I decided emerse myself in ideas, and spent a long time scribbling and doodling quick designs- experimenting with weight of line, textures etc. Although there were lots of potential ideas and designs available for development, I really kept on coming back to this organic wood-grain-like texture (see above), that, with the more I looked at it, the more it reminded me of streaky bacon. Anyway...

Whilst re-evaluating my designs, I tried to steer away from the literal presentation of my adjectives, words like "elegant" and "feminine" seemingly mundane, with so many expressions of these words already within typography and graphics, I didn't feel as if the ideas were at all original.

I thought about some of the other points Chloe bought up- the fact that she was bought up in the countryside, and her favourite book, named 'Wild Swan', which inspired me to re-discover the wonderful graphics work of Si Scott, and in particular, a swan illustration...

I really like the variation in the weight of line and curvature of this hand-rendered piece, and felt really inspired by the natural, elegant flow.

Therefore, I skecthed up the quick 'F O N T' design (at the top of the page) in response to this. After a really productive and helpful progress crit on the afternoon of Friday 8th, I gained some really helpful and productive advice- the vast majority of which i agreed with, and intended to infact go on to do myself.

The most prominient points were:

• ensure that the letters link together in one particular style for fluidity.
• keep elegant and more subtle- less block colour perhaps?
• consider the weight of line and thickness of stroke- needs to be more styalised.

• Try out different scales of the typeface- ensure that it is both readable and legible in varying sizes.
• Practice the "wrap-around" style in different ways (as in the 'O' letter).

I'm really looking forward to developing this further next week and be able to present a professional and creative alphabet and glyph collection inspired by Chloe on the final presentation assessment on Friday 15th October.