Images and type

I liked using images. It allowed me to play with the text in a subtle way within the context of picture. With the other previous studies, I found myself struggling to find a point at which to start. Whether that be where to start with my dominants or what display face to use, having a context to evolve and elaborate upon was really a easy way to get a foot in the door, so to speak.

When critique time came around, my studies didn't progress to the second section of the critique where we diagnosed each study individually. To me, that makes my studies boring as a whole. So, based off of the consensus I gathered from all the critiques, I want to make sure my type doesn't break any golden rules, margin, readability, contrast and such.

Looking forward, with the next studies of video, I really want to work with type set into the environment and the readability and subtle interactions to be had in that respect.

Display kinetics

With animating display type it was really a chore with some of the faces. I again found myself animating to the feel of the type. I tweaked a few of them, but I still didn't get a composition I was really proud of, thus the animations were lacking as well. When I got to animating, I felt constrained by the need to animate in z space. Mainly because a lot of these fonts are really sensitive to size relative to details in the type.

Also. About 'Type and Deconstruction',When I was reading it, I was pretty interested, but I couldn't help but get distracted easily. The type was definitely playing around, And really liked what they did with the quotations, but the content fell flat with some of the other pieces. Nevertheless, it did give me a few ideas I want to try out.

Display Type

In working with display type, I found that there is a lot of content available on the internet (duh), and that a lot of it is terrible (also duh). I also found that in making these compositions work, I took a back seat to the look of the font. A lot of them worked well with certain layouts, mainly because their designs were always so one sided as to whether they were thick stroked blocks or light scripts. When I sat down to work on these I also surprised as to how easily a chunk of the display fonts, at least the ones I picked, were pretty legible but I set them rather large either way to accent the aesthetics of the type and the tried using that as my dominant element.

Kinetic type

This was my first real effort at making kinetic type. I've slapped some type in after effects before and moved it around accordingly, but never really on its own accord so this was interesting. I found as I animated that trying to convey the meaning of the words became much more profound with just the smallest movement. I also found myself gravitating more towards the movement and feel of the mixed faces as a composition, rather than what the phrases say phonetically. With the blocks and compositions I found myself more comfortable with breaking down the pieces and allowing them to be expressed with more gusto.


Kinetic Type and such from Evan White on Vimeo.

Mixed fonts.

Working with mixed fonts was a little wonky. Taking the phrase, which also felt a bit wonky, and breaking it down in a phonetically accurate manner did help attune to what font the type fits best to. As I worked I tried to focus on thirds and a grid layout to structure all of my pieces, but as I had people take a look at my layouts I got some helpful negative feedback. What happened was that I lost any sort of dominant verticals or horizontals in my pieces. Going back and looking at that, it was more apparent as to what I needed to do, but I still had problems setting interesting relations outside of the interaction on the dominant intersections. So, I need to keep an eye out for that in the future.

During the critique there was nothing super specific about my comps. The two that where picked out emphasized "Ambiguity" as the dominate statement and had the other pieces of text related to that. So I'll try to relate that ideation a bit more.

With animating these guys, I'm definitely going to revise a wee bit and try to make them a bit more screen friendly. Im hoping to create a natural rhythm that comes with reading or speaking, which should be pretty slick.

First post.

Hello there, I'm Evan and this is the first post of a new blog made for type. Here I'll be posting my work, critiques, thoughts, and rants related to my type studies and projects. This should be updated twice a week at least so look forward to seeing some content as I adventure through type this semester.