Graphic Design

For the “Found Alphabet” project, we were to more closely observe the world around us. We were to pay attention in such a way that we could creatively see, find, and create an alphabet out of the ordinary objects we encountered. I found my alphabet by capturing the movement of light with a camera.

Letters formed by playing with glow sticks.

A photograph that has captured an extended period of time can be very intriguing because it reveals what our eyes can’t see on their own. I wanted to see how well letters could be distinguished by moving glow sticks around in the dark. Every movement made was captured on camera in a similar way that a chalkboard captures your hand movements when writing.

Because you cannot see what you’re writing on, the letters have a distinct, elementary feel to them, as though they had been written by someone learning to write. However, they maintain their clarity and are still easy to read. They have naturally been presented against a black background to make them stand out, as they naturally do in the dark.

In conclusion, the desired clear and distinct letter forms were found and have been presented in a readable way. Even greater letter detail and light movements can be seen when looking closer at the image.

Learning Summary

It was challenging to create a desired letter when it couldn’t be immediately observed. I had to constantly take a picture of the light movements, then get back to the camera to see how it turned out. It was tedious and repetitive. However, through trial and error, corrections could be made and the captured letters were improved. I got better at anticipating problems and correcting them before they happened, which improved both the speed and quality of the work done.

I love skateboarding, design, photography, and typography. All these things helped inspire me for this project. I really wanted to do something that interested me, and this is what I came up with.

skateboarding saved my life

I photographed each letter in my family room on a 6 ft. tripod with five light sources and a blanket for the background. I really learned good it feels to create something that means something to myself. I will definitely use the letters from this shoot in the future for a project I have planned. I hadn’t thought about using it until it was all coming together in the end.

It would obviously be used as a display face. Even though I used a mix of capitals as well as lower-case letter forms, I made the x and the cap heights the same. I did this because I wanted to use the least amount of skateboards possible for each letter, so I used either the capital or the lower-case form of each letter depending on its simplest form.

Learning Summary

I think overall its a strong piece. It’s cohesive because they were all made from the same type of object, and they are all the same size. I wish I had more Speedlight flashes though. That would have made the editing easier. The hardest part was taking the shadows out of the photos.

In most cases, the alphabet stirs up childhood memories because as a child is when the majority of children learn the alphabet and learn how to draw letter forms. With my alphabet I wanted to create an alphabet that had childlike qualities, so I decided to take the approach of creating an alphabet with clouds- or rather cotton balls that give the appearance of clouds- because one of my favorite childhood games was “what’s that cloud look like?” You know, the game where you lay in your backyard on a beautiful summer afternoon looking at all of the clouds float by in the sky using your imagination to create images with the clouds.

What's that cloud look like?

When you first glance at my alphabet it looks as though they are just a bunch of clouds sailing across the sky, but when you look into the details of the clouds you soon discover that they are clouds in the form and shape of the alphabet. I feel as though I was able to accomplish the childhood feel that most people can emotionally connect to by creating fluffy, innocent, happy clouds that then create unique and interesting letter forms within the cloud shapes.

Connecting the two (the clouds and the alphabet) made a stronger piece because of the emotional experience one might encounter by observing this alphabet- with the bonus of looking at unique and interesting letter forms of the alphabet. So allow yourself to take a moment and experience childhood again while observing this fluffy, innocent alphabet.

Learning Summary

It is important to think outside the box and to get creative with using the elements we have all around us. It is so easy to become confined to what the computer has to offer, but in some cases, it can be completely necessary to have the liberty to use other elements to create with. Through this project I was better able to appreciate and to stretch my creative level by creating an alphabet out of something interesting and giving the alphabet a more dynamic feel to it other than just using type from a computer.

Whenever we think of alphabet, the first thing comes to our mind would either be books, newspapers, or the internet. You know, those are the things that literately contain alphabet. However, this special project force us to “OPEN” our eyes and “FIND” the letter forms in something other than just “real letters”. So I used onions.

My lovely but smelly onion alphabet

First, I love eating. Food always makes me happy. And I also like cooking. It relaxes me from all those “non-stop coming” homework. As I was thinking about the assignment, I was cutting onions. And all the sudden, letterforms started showing themselves with the little onion pieces.

Well, as all of you may know, onion is not an easy thing to work with, so I did some research on “how to cut onions”. It gave a lot of different ideas of how to deal with the strong smell, and also how to “play” with them. By doing this project, I learned to see things differently, and of course, how to deal with onions. I smelled like onion for 2 days no matter how hard I tried to wash it off.

After this interesting assignment–finding alphabet around us. I realized that ideas are just simply sitting next to us. I love the assignment. It’s definitely an eye-opening experiences.

Learning Summary

Finding the alphabet is not that hard, but creating them from the most ordinary thing is a bit challenging. My eye are opened for ideas around us. Sometimes, the most exordinary piece of work starts from the simplest thing.

Holding on to my onion idea is not easy because of vary reasons. For example, making them unique but somehow consistence. I think I successfully solve the problem by repeating some of the patterns. The other challenge that I had was the strong smell. It definitely made my brother angry because the apartment smelled like onion the whole day. But through the research I did, I was able to make the smell less strong.

I enjoy this project a lot, and I did learn quite a bit through it.

The alphabet is all around us. On billboards and computer screens. In books, magazines and road signs- yet we don’t often take the time to look at the world around us to find from A to Z. This project captured the ABC’s of a local park in shadows, buildings and in the grass.

found alphabet in porter park

I had a few objectives in mind when given this assignment. First and foremost, I’m a mom. Daphne has me wrapped around her miniature finger and so I knew I had to work the project around her. Daphne loves walks, and we love walking to the tree lined park just a few blocks from our house. I took Daphne on our longest walk ever and meandered through the jungle gyms, trees, splash park and grass until I found all 26 letters. I knew it wouldn’t be the easiest of scenarios, but I knew I could keep Daphne entertained while creating a found object alphabet. Win, win.

Learning summary

Also, I wanted to illustrate that the alphabet is all around us. I didn’t have to create anything to show the characters, it was there if we choose to take the time to look. I didn’t realize though how creative I would have to become- I found myself looking at shadows, at tiny pieces of bark, trash, initials carved into tree trunks and in just about every nook and cranny in porter park. For the layout, I wanted to keep it very straight forward, the letters in boxes with spaces in between each. My thought behind this is that it would make each letter more legible and it would help the format to not feel cluttered. Adding structure through the layout helped you to be able to see each individual letter.

If I was to do this project again, I would hope to the same thing, a found alphabet, but in an urban setting. I think it would be really fun to do in an area with tall buildings and interesting angles. I love typography and thoroughly enjoyed this assignment; even though at least 4 elderly people in the park approached me and asked me what I was doing.

For the first assignment we where suppose to find an alphabet around us.  I found the letters in Lego bricks.  Legos are great because whatever you can imagine you can create.

Letterforms found in piles of Lego bricks

For my first attempt I constructed the Legos to make letterforms.  Doing this made the letters more made then found.  To correct this I took a hand full of dark and light bricks and dropped them on to the table and then rearaged the Legos to make letterforms.  This gave it a more natural and spontaneous look. For a border of the photo I used a Polaroid photo. I did this to imitate the right angles of the bricks.  Then arranged the photos in a jumbled order to refrence the piles of legos.

Leaning Summary

There are many things which i would change.  First I would use colored bricks to give in more interest and give it an easier read, so that the viewer can tell that they are Legos.  I would also use more contrast so the letterforms can be read more easily. Finally the composition could us more overlapping and the white spaces nonexistent.

When creating this found alphabet I wanted to use an object that people are familiar with and can be found in most homes.  I decided to use necklaces to do this.  I enjoyed using necklaces to make my alphabet because I was able to transform an item we are used to seeing in an arc shape into new shapes that represent letter forms.

An alphabet created with necklaces.

The main elements I focused on when choosing which pieces of jewelry to use were color and texture. You can recognize it as an alphabet from a distance and a closer look reveals texture and various shades of color.As I designed the page I chose to align the letters with even spacing in between to resemble a jewelry case we would find when shopping for the perfect accessory.

Overall I was pleased with the way my alphabet turned out.  It is interesting while cohesive creating a pleasing visual. It gives the viewer a unique experience that will effect the way they view everyday objects around them fulfilling the purpose of the piece.

Learning Summary

This assignment was a great learning experience particularly when it came to my knowledge of the tools.  I gained new abilities in both Photoshop and InDesign which will help me with future assignments.  I also learned to look at an ordinary object in an interesting and unexpected way.  An experience always proves to be a positive one when my views are broadened and expanded.

The Found Alphabet project was a way to see the world differently.  We were required to find or create the letters in the alphabet using everything around us.  After creating or finding all the letters we were then asked to design them in an intelligible way.

alphabet created from tools

My project focused on finding all the letter forms in the shapes of tools.  I decided to create each letter with just one tool.  After finding all of the tools I looked for a way to present them on a single sheet of paper and still make the tool alphabet legible.  I came up with this multi-colored pattern because I wanted the piece to feel like it was a poster teaching kids the alphabet.  The other reason why I went with solid colored backgrounds was because the tools themselves were very detailed and the metal became lost in the background otherwise.  For the background I decided to go with a dark gray with a metal tread pattern.  That was to stay with the tool theme, but not be too overpowering that it became the center of your attention and focus.  It was meant to be a subtle surprise when you approached the design up close.

Overall, the design was successful in portraying the elementary feel of learning the alphabet in a creative way.  It conveys the correct feeling and style.

I learned quite a bit from this project.  Mainly though, I learned that I need to keep my eyes open for typographical opportunities and see the world differently than others.  That is what is needed in order to become a creative mind.  If you can see that world differently, be able to relate that back to people, you will be successful.

The Alphabet Assignment was given to us as the first of many for the semester. The purpose being to find the alphabet in everyday living without using actual letters. Whether is was from things outside that can naturally make the shapes of letters or through our own creative minds we could we could take natural things and make the alphabet.

Made with Salt and shaped with an x-acto knife.

As I began to contemplate the concept I wanted to go for I was in the middle of watching an episode of Law & Order. There was a cocaine addict in the episode and because I don’t have the funds for actual cocaine I thought of using a similar substance. I took the Salt and formed a 2.5″ x 2.5″ square and flattened it with a book. The letter forms are original and hand formed to bring unity throughout the alphabet. The salt gave each letter a unique texture to give variety as well.

Learning Summary

After the long detailed process I finished and enjoyed very much this project. Before using salt I tried powdered sugar but it was a disaster and was not workable so salt came to the rescue. The alphabet project was creative and help open my eyes to see that design is everywhere and can me beautiful.

We see letters all around us everyday. Often times we don’t even notice them. But how many times have you looked at a tire and seen a great big black O? Letters are basic shapes that we use to represent sounds. These shapes are all around us, if we only open our eyes and look for them.

I found my alphabet in blocks.

I was inspired by a small wooden puzzle on my coffee table. While pulling it apart and putting it back together, I was reminded of how I would make images or letters with blocks when I was a young child. Blocks are a very basic shape and they can be used to create other basic shapes. My goal was to keep the shapes as basic as possible.

I tried to use as few blocks as possible in making the letter forms. I felt that this would give the letters a more rudimentary and basic look. If the alphabet is supposed to be found, the more literal the letter forms, the less organic and found they appear. Only two of the letters use five blocks and only 5 letters use four blocks. All others use two or three blocks.

I really like the way each block has its own color and texture. I feel it gives the piece a sense of rhythm and pace. The angles of the individual blocks helps lead the eye around the composition. I didn’t want the letters to be too well aligned. I wanted the piece to feel as though it was done by a child playing on the carpet.

Learning Summary

I tried several different ways to “find” the alphabet before I settled on this approach. It reminds me of the shapes project from 130. Letters are very basic shapes when it comes down to it. Now everywhere I look I see letters in everyday objects. There are times I wish I had my camera just to try and see how many letters I would be able to capture off of one object or out of one room.