99 monsters » Student Work

The Book of No

Calliope — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 05:04:01 +0000

One of my favorite typographic assignments from design school, this was from our Mysterious Signs project. Our task was to create a set of six signs, install them somewhere temporarily, photograph them and then create a book illustrated by them. It was up to us to create either a book that explained or further compounded the mystery.

I found inspiration in a series of text messages sent over a fall semester and a strangely poetic set of public information icons used to explain things you could or couldn’t do in parks, rest stops and on freeways. Seems appropriate that you can’t just eat your fish anywhere you like. The hypothetical narrator of The Book of No gets more perturbed and fixated on the rules and sub-rules essential for everyday living, leading up to a very bizarre ending complete with ponies and rabbits.

The signs were vinyl lettering printed on gatorboard, made to the dimensions of real street parking signs in Vancouver. I kept in the strange spacing in front of numbers and the centered text.

The text messages I used in each sign became surreal references out of context. This one was more about missing a show if I didn’t arrive before midnight, but it could easily be about the mothership leaving without me.

Boxes within boxes define the content areas, visually reinforcing the control issues of the narrator and extreme strictness of the various arbitrary rules.

Mustn’t Grumble

Calliope — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 03:47:05 +0000

A logo for one of my grad year projects. Mustn’t Grumble was a line of knitted accessories that used intarsia (a technique using multiple strands of colored yarn) to render enlarged, pixelated typefaces. I used typefaces specifically designed for flash animation.

I designed and developed an online shop in Flash to exhibit the pieces and sold wrist warmers, arm warmers, scarfs and hats. I exhibited some of these designs at the 2004 Bad Type conference at St. Bride’s Printing Library in London.

The typeface in this logo is based on letterforms from Unibody, one of the pixel fonts I was using in my knitting patterns. I knitted the words, then scanned and digitally traced the resulting fabric, warping it to show that it was flexible and reminiscent of the actual textile. The angry knitter is a pixelized illustration, referring to the often monotonous, frustrating labor of the craft.

Mustn't Grumble logo with angry knitter.

Pink type on black wristwarmer.

Black type on pink arm warmer.

London Wordmark

Calliope — Mon, 15 Mar 2004 04:59:43 +0000

The challenge for this student project was to create a wordmark that captured the essence of a city. London is a city of movement, with lives intersecting and dispersing. People from all over the world move through the city, either for a few days, a few years, or for a lifetime. The angular serifs and intersecting lines of the London wordmark reflect the movement of people through the city.

The letterforms of this wordmark draw from the historical shapes of fraktur swash capitals as well as a square, industrial typeface found on the side of a Heidelberg printing press at Reading University. By combining these typefaces with the soft angles of the famous London tube map, the wordmark embraces the past and present realities of the city.

Process sketches illustrate the progression of the wordmark through the exploration of industrial, fraktur and serifed letter shapes.

Final vector wordmark with alternate sizes.

Initial exploration with serifs.

Tracing serifs to add motion.

A swashy L joins some industrial capitals.

Letters get more elaborate.

Last sketches before scanning into computer.