Analogue Communique

The objective of the first physical studio session of the year was to create hand rendered typography to communicate a message.Using characters within a specific format we were asked to be creative with our approach to typography and lettering. This was an opportunity to be experimental and playful with ideas and approach, within a prosaic structure. We were also asked to consider the individual letter forms as part of a communicated message, but also as a graphic symbol, pictorially, as a character, or as shape.

Initially we were asked to think up a quote/message that had to start with 'I am' and then we had to finish off the statement. The grids we were using only had 16 spaces so that also had to be taken in to consideration when thinking up ideas. 

From my phrase ideas the ones I thought worked the best were 'I am only human' and 'I am many things'. With these phrases now chosen I began to experiment with different letter forms:

This was the first design I created which I don't think works too well as I tried to fit the last word in the phrase in too small a space and also some of the letters don't look right together.

This is my second design which I like better than the first because I gave each letter it's own box, but liked the other phrase 'I am many things' better so went on to create more designs using that one.

Again, I felt this worked better than the last and I used letter designs I had previously used but decided to keep the letter types the same for each word which I think works better visually.

Out of all my message designs I think the last two are the best and my development from the start of the session to the end through experimentation is obvious. Fro these designs I will be able to experiment further with scale and refining.