BUILD

The word given to me by the "randomizer" was 'build'.

At first I was extremely disappointed with this word. After a few attempts at some examples, I became increasingly frustrated with it.

From the beginning I wanted to feature all of my letters on acetate. As we were only allowed to use black and white, I assumed this would be ok. The first few letters went great, but it got up to a point where the acetate was getting so dirty, it would become covered in everything I was using and it all got a bit scruffy. Card on acetate also wasn't the most attractive situation. 

Unfortunately, my acetate supply ran out, and the shop didn't sell any. This led me to start over completely on plastic sleeves...they looked awful.

Attempt 3 was black card. I liked the way a lot of them looked on it, however, I felt so restricted by the black and white brief. Every time I felt myself putting white card onto black card I became annoyed, my imagination stuck at finding something else more imaginative that I could use. 

Once they were all complete, I was satisfied by the majority, but there are evidently a few that could be worked upon. With more time I would have loved to have found more interesting ways of creating my letters by hand. Normally a very hands on person, I felt like I wasn't doing my best with this project. I believe this was mainly due to the choice of materials and colour restriction.

DESIGNS AND SKETCHES

A selection of designs and sketches taken from my book

Y&A

For this letter, inspiration was taken from a poster designed by Y&A. Used to advertise an architecture exhibition, this seemed perfect and extremely representative of my word. Originally, the letter was very jagged with no straight edges, as though it had been created through quick thick brush strokes. I chose to straighten up the edges, and lose some parts of the design as well. In order to make it my own, I traced it onto some black and white photography of a street sign/wall that I had previously taken, all this tying in with my word.

TRIANGLE

Original typeface taken from notion. This letter shows a lot of structure, formed by a collection of solid vertical lines. Although shaped like a triangle, it is still evident what letter it is supposed to represent, however this may be supported further by the other letters around it. I decided to use an extract from a magazine, that was loosely based around architecture, to create the thin lines that make up the triangle. These were glued back into the shape in order to create an A-like pyramid. 

CONSTRUCTION OF AN 'A'

Here are some quick ideas and sketches in relation to the deconstruction of a particular typeface. I changed the length of the letter and also the shape, re-designing it so that it would fit inside a 15x15 box. 

Tracing paper was used to create each section, and this was then transferred onto black card with a white marker pen. I hoped to fill in the blocks, however it became much too "liney" and a bit of a mess. 

I used letter transfers to number each segment in the hope that this would make the idea behind it a bit more obvious. 

Further info on this can be found on my DC blog.

LETTERS

Upper case A. Inspiration taken from Johann David Steingruber's alphabet that represented floor plans of buildings, designed all the way back in 1773. 

Created through strips of an article on architecture, built up to represent structure.

A standard pyramid shape, representing the letter 'A' in a bit of a round-a-bout way. Re-use of architecture article.

Inspiration taken from lego blocks, built up into and 3D 'A' like structure. Drawn in white marker paint.

Typeface inspired by Chilean design team Y&A. Photography of street sign and brick wall.

Deconstruction of the letter 'A', all three parts.

Inspiration taken from a strange wooden bell tower. Made to look like  a wooden structure.

Pyramid structure. Entrance shaped to represent the lines featured in the letter 'A'.

Meccano lettering.

A builder's compass.

SELECTING MY LETTER

Reasons for choosing the letter 'A'

- for it's structure

- representation of architecture

- relation to pyramids

- can be heightened, shortened, "built upon"

- different components
- naturally the first letter
- commonly used
- important 

PREVIOUS BOX MOCK-UPS

Templates taken from google.

TICK LIST

               This image is something we thought about getting printed onto the side of the box itself, however it was decided that something was needed as a handout that came within the box itself. It would be used as a sort of guide to inform the user of the type of things they could keep in their kit.

LOGO ON BOX

We printed out a variation of red and blue logos which we decided upon after our group crit. We made a mixture of white and brown boxes out of the standard chinese take-away box template. On each, we placed a different coloured logo on each side to work out which combination worked best. 

We believe this outcome came out much stronger.

LOGO DEVELOPMENT

As a group we decided to change the font of the logo and also delete the bubbles that were in the left hand corner. Simon ended up choosing 'Heiti TC' as the font, which he believed to be much more appropriate.

During a group crit we asked the question "do you think our colourway is suitable?'

It was suggested that we looked into using parchment paper for our main template, and a red for the logo. 

At this point we had already made the decision to use a take-away style box template, and therefore liked the idea of the standard mix of white and red. However, we listened to feedback and tried the logo and box in a few different colour variations, all of which we liked.

LOGO IDEAS

'Here are my first logos for our Survival kit. I simply used the Elliptical marquee Tool on photoshop to get the bubble look. The Font used is Helvetica Neue, mostly 'Ultra Light'. I prefer the more simple look, for example the 2nd and 3rd logos on the page. 

Next I am going to find a plain box on the internet to play around with on photoshop, get a mock idea of what the logo will look like on packaging.'

http://s-isles1114-dp.blogspot.com/

'The box and the photo is not mine. I simply found it on google images.

                       To look at other examples of the logo on box's follow this link to Sam Hoh's blog.

http://s-hoh1114-dp.blogspot.com/'

DESIGN IDEAS

A scene created for our survival kit by Sam, displaying life with and without the kit. Done through the use of hand drawn type and the use of a tripod. 

HOW TO MANAGE A HEAVY WORKLOAD

'I am in Blog Group 8 and here is our mind map for 'How To'. Our idea is to create a Survival Box which will help you get through your hard work. We don't intend to put anything in the box, we just plan to create   the box itself. A name is not yet given but so far we have 'SBox' and 'Student Box'. The next stage is to gather useful reference that will inspire our final outcome'

(taken from Simon's blog)

HOW TO...

HOW TO COPE WITH A DEMANDING WORK LOAD

10 THEMES THROUGHOUT OUR ALPHABET

1. Colour

2. Variations- Mostly different.

3. Subjects (Hobbies etc.)

4. Individual- As a whole our work is different .

5. Some are handmade

6. They all have a digital finish.

7. They are all personal

8. Mostly, as a set they are lower an higher case.

9. Image and type.

10. Likes and dislikes

MY 10 FAVOURITE LETTERS