Experiments with typography

Although I spent two years studying Graphic Communication before starting my Illustration university course, I found that I am still not ambitious or experimental when it comes to my use of typography.

The workshop that the piece above is from was a tactile experiment with cutting up letters, images and shapes to create magazine type double page spreads.

Instead of looking at this workshop as creating a ‘final’ piece, I experimented with how the shapes of letters reflect a theme or subject that is shown in other imagery. The double page magazine spread layout helped me to have space to experiment and utilise negative space to draw the viewer’s attention to specific aspects of my work.

I wasn't working with any specific articles so I created my own titles. With the ‘nope’ piece I didn’t use any type fonts, only the circle shapes cut and structured to create the word ‘nope’. Using collage allowed me to formulate and experiment with different ideas in a more tactile way that drawing or digital, so created different results. With this example, I discovered that putting the filled circles behind the figures further emphasised the religious aspect of the photograph. And that similarly influences the repetition of circles in the text.

As interesting as it is to experiment with it, I think it would be difficult to experiment with this knowing the restraints of a subject matter or theme for a brief, like the book cover. When the subject is open, I can formulate different ideas more easily.