Walks

I love walking. It makes me feel better. I also love when you find random bits of art along the way. These where some carvings I found on one of my walks :) so glad I found these. I wonder who did them, they look so interesting.

Typography

I am not the best typographer, its not exactly my strong point. I am currently trying to change this, reading as much as I can about typography. Currently I am reading Just my Type by Simon Garfield, It is an interesting book on type, and explains to me why people don't like Comic Sans. I know what you must be thinking, if she is doing Graphic Design she must already know why no one likes Comic Sans, I don't like to form an opinion on things until I know as much as I can about them. I can not resent Vincent Connare for bringing a typeface to the world without first understanding why it was created in the first place. To be frank, after finding out about why it was created, I can understand it more and I don't hate it or even dislike it. It is perfect for what it was created for. OK so it went wrong but that wasn't the creators fault. It was initially intended for a friendly program called Microsoft Bob, with child like illustrations, and a friendly manor of guiding people through the program, the language used was simple, but the typeface was Times New Roman. Now as I said before I am no avid typographer but this to me seems out of place. Comic Book (as it was then known) was perfect for this kind of thing, a friendly non aggressive non corporate typeface. It was never used in Microsoft Bob as it had already been set in Times New Roman and Comic Sans was bigger then Times New Roman, so it couldn't just simply replace it. So how did it go so wrong? Well it was added to the font menu of which everyone has access to. In a digital age peoples solution to cope was to go with something familiar. Comic Sans is a type that most recognize because it is so similar to handwriting, so many people used it for the wrong reasons - such as a tombstone, this is obviously not the way the type was intended to be used. But at least it can be joked about now. Comic Sans walked into a bar, the bar tender said sorry we don't serve your type here. Anyway enough about what I have been reading, here is my attempt at typography, for a quick brief in which we was to pick and advertise a font. I chose Carbon_14 relating it to the atom and the half life of this particular atom (how quickly it decays).

Busy

I've been busy trying to catch up on work so much so I have yet again let my blog slip behind - so I guess it's time to catch up again. I've been creating a vehicle for my MMM project, and it has turned out to be a wallet - made of Tyvex. I am currently creating a book to go with it for my C.V so when its all complete I shall be posting pictures. I have created a new identity - which I can actually show people which I poster earlier so I have been re-doing my development file which took longer then expect and still has bits to finish off. I have finished my end of year show brief.

 This is the poster I created for it, which I am really quite proud of, I feel I learned a lot on this brief and developed each time I went back to the design to develop it. I also re-did some of my caffeine brief in which I went to train stations dressed like an idiot. I was asked how brave are you? and so I answered with something slightly crudely designed but definitely brave. I chose train stations for this brief which asked for funny faces in public places because I do spend a lot of time in train stations. Always have. traveling up and down the country and sometimes just to Wigan. It does seem to be my main mode of transport. There is another level to the choice and I guess for me it just symbolises a journey and the stops along the way but that seem overly metaphorical so I'll leave them musings to myself and let you interpret the reasons behind the choice in your own way. That or you could just enjoy the humor of someone dressed like an idiot. Here is a selection...