OUGD403 Alphabet Soup:Visual thinking: Shatter

Brief

Produce a set, series or sequence of ten letterforms that explore and communicate your interpretation of the word that you have selected from the randomisers.

Using your new found appreciation of the anatomy of typographic forms and the wealth of the research that you have already gathered, focus on the manipulation of existing letterforms in order to solve this problem.

My word is:

SHATTER

Definitions of Shatter:

Research

To start off with I needed to research into the meaning and different synonyms of the word and the above diagram is of what i found. I knew from the start I didn't want to be too predictable with what i created and im trying to think out of the box when I'm creating my ten letters. I like the idea of when something is shattered it is then being destroyed so that could be an angle i could take.

I started to look at different fonts that could be suited to my work, i wanted to use quite a thick chunky typeface so that i could do more with it. These are some examples of fonts that i had looked at. When designing to fit the brief the visual communication was that it was meant to look like the word you have been given so i found it helpful to look at other typefaces that have been designed to portray a certain theme.
Below are various typographic alphabets, some relatively standard others quite overly illustrated all of which i looked at to get a feel and sense of how i could create my own alphabet.

http://media-cache-lt0.pinterest.com/upload/238831586459740424_p4DgbnLy_b.jpg

4th October 2012

This image was created to look like a Robot, with its mechanical pieces surrounding each individual letterhttp://www.behance.net/gallery/Alphabet-Typography/3894287
4th October 2012

http://vintageprintable.swivelchairmedia.com/?attachment_id=2712
4th October 2012

http://depositphotos.com/9659298/stock-illustration-Font-alphabet.html
4th October 2012

Bunny Rabbit Typography
http://www.swiss-miss.com/2008/09/bunny-rabbit-al.html
4th October 2012

Techno Alphabet
http://vectorsgraphic.com/2011/09/techno-style-alphabet-vector/
4th October 2012

http://www.typographyserved.com/Gallery/Random_Got_Beautiful/165848

11th October 2012

http://www.designshard.com/inspiration/amazing-floral-typography-inspiration/

11th October 2012

This is the font i took inspiration from :

http://betype.co/post/24611854349/typography-by-nouvellevaguex

12th October 2012

 

Above is the font i used as the main shape for my letters, however quite a lot of detail within this piece i didn't include in my own as it wouldn't of matched with my shattered theme. The main reason i chose this particular letter form instead of the others because i liked the change in thickness to each part of the letter. It allows you to do so much more to a letter having various degrees of thickness and the thin lines adds the intricate details. I thought the letter form reminds me Art Nouveau which works quite drastically with my idea of the word Shatter. Art nouveau is smooth curved rounded patterns where shattered glass is broken into many sharp shards so to put the two together i thought would make a nice combination.

Below are a few images of the research i looked into on how i could represent how shattered glass could be created there is a mixture of shattered wine glasses and typography that has been made to look like its shattering.

Research into Images of Shatter

http://johnnymarcondes.wordpress.com/hyper/

17th October 2012

 

http://www.typecon.com/goodies
17th October 2012

http://arnovw.deviantart.com/art/Text-Shatter-132213871
17th October 2012

http://v4vodka.deviantart.com/art/Shattered-Glass-102817558
17th October 2012

This is an image of a bottle of 'Lucozade' which i took inspiration from for one of my letters, i found the intricate detail that reminds me of pixels, fading away up the bottle represents bits of shattered glass broken away. although visually it isn't an exact representation of shattered glass you sort of still get a feel for it.

Sketches:
Below are some skteches i did when designing my 10 letters. I tried to do different variations of how i could represent the word 'shatter.' Initially when i got my word i thought it would be easy in a sense to come up with different ways. However i struggled to be able to draw the ideas in my head to make it look the way i wanted to, so all in all i wasnt 100% happy with all that i had drawn purely because my expectations and the quality i had in my head wasnt the same when i came to draw.

Analysing my final Pieces:
The images below are 9 of my final letters, as you can see they all vary with a different style. My favourite design would probably be the A although in group crits this letter wasnt chosen to be in top 5 of favourites which i was quite surprised about. The E and I were designed to look like a wine glass shattering i find that the E doesnt work affectively as well as the I purely because of the way the E looks within the design. Also they arent clear comparisons to a wine glass. I find that it doesnt represent it aswell due to the fact that we could only use black and white and if i was allowed to use colour i could use the colour of wine or any coloured drink to emphasise the liquid splashing everywhere.
what would you do differently next time: Next time if i could do this project it would probably start with the reasearch ad have more different variations of designs to see which would work the best and also it would enable me to practise drawing shattered pieces of glass.