What's Your Type

We have a special class critique for Round 1 of Project 4: Old World Signage Revival with a SPECIAL GUEST on Thursday, February 16, 2012.

This special guest is a Creative Director, designer, illustrator, letterer, typographer who is coming to our class to participate in the class critique and share her work.

Be professional, arrive on time, rehearse your Round 1 presentation, and be sure to practice your oral presentation.

You will be presenting your in-progress signage revival, the original inspiration and any sketches that you may want to share. Be sure your color printouts are trimmed and look professional. Prepare a 5-min oral presentation of the in-progress work that you’re presenting. Even though this is an in-progress critique, we will have a professional visiting our class, so please be professional with your visual and oral presentation.

We will pin up everybody’s printouts on the wall, and have each person present their work. It is important that you keep the 5-min time period for your oral presentation to ensure that we’ll have enough time to get through everybody’s presentations.

Tip: When preparing an oral presentation, think of a narrative: beginning, middle, and end.
- First: introduce yourself. Say your name and a brief introduction about what you love about typography. Thank the guest for coming.
- Begin with how you approached the project, where you found your inspiration, what about the typography inspired you to choose that particular signage.
- Next, talk about your revival and your idea. Show your letterform sketches, your rough comps, and explain your idea for the revival list.
- Discuss your in-progress revival list. Explain how you extracted the letterforms, and how you created new letterforms based off existing found letters in your original sign. Share any challenges that you encountered in the process of recreating the letterforms.
- Finish by saying what you would like to achieve for the Final presentation next week.
- Immediately after presenting, listen to the guest’s feedback. Take notes. Answer any questions.
- Conclude by thanking the guest again for the feedback.

After the class critique, we will take a short break, and the return to the classroom for the special lecture that the guest has prepared for our class.

Round 1: Special Guest Critique + Lecture
Thursday, February 16, 2012, starts at 12pm

Please do not be late. It is extremely inconsiderate and unprofessional.

Walk around the city with a keen eye for old world signage. It’s everywhere if you keep your eyes open and look!

Original Inspiration: Canter’s Deli signage

Revived Deliscript by Michael Doret

Find local signages that you absolutely love. Photograph beautiful, old storefront signage specimens. Think old world, something unique with flavor and history.

Print out your specimens and select one signage specimen that you love the most.

Extract the letterforms from your signage specimen, using the tools of your choice (either by hand, or digitally). Using your extracted letterforms, construct your own list of items that store may feature. This list is your type specimen.

When you construct your list of items, there may be missing letters from your original signage specimen. The challenge is to create the letters you need from the letters that are found in your specimen. That’s the fun part!!!

Print out your original signage specimen on 8.5″x11″ in full color. Print out your recreated list on 8.5″x11″ in full color. Trim both printouts. Mount both printouts side by side on black illustration board with 1″ in between both printouts and 1″ border all the way around. Bring the hard copy to class. Bring a PDF of other signage specimen inspirations, your signage specimen, your final revival, process work, and any other images that you wish to share with the class.

Be prepared to present and discuss your work.

Put your signage specimen, final revival (and any other images you want to share) in a PDF and name your pdf: YourName_SignageRevivial.pdf

Bring your PDF on a drive and load your PDF onto the desktop as soon as you arrive to class.

Objective: Observe letterforms in your environment. Appreciate the flavor of old signage versus the sterility of the brand new. Create new letterforms based off existing found letters.

Deliverables:
Print outs of reference and final revival, printed in full color, trimmed and mounted exactly as specified.
A PDF presentation (YourName_SignageRevivial.pdf)
Be prepared to present and explain your work, your process, and the places you found your inspiration

Grading:
100 points maximum based on the revival, execution of signage typography and presentation (meeting the deadline, meeting the project objective, craftsmanship of mounted work, quality of solution, quality of specimens, visual presentation craftsmanship, oral presentation rehearsal and overall delivery.)

Round 1: sketches, color printout of revival and original inspiration
Due: Thursday, February 16, 2012 at 12pm

Final
Revise your Round 1 based on the feedback from the guest lecturer and the class. Perfect your specimen until it’s flawless.
Print and mount your specimen and original inspiration exactly as specified above.
Bring your final deliverables, printed, mounted exactly as specified + your PDF presentation
Due: Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 12pm

Must Reads for Research:
Ed Fella, Letters on America
Center for Vernacular Typography
http://aigalosangeles.org/features/2010/09/art-imitating-life-imitating-a.php

Additional Resources:
Bodega Portraits by Melissa Gorman

You should have taken at least 20 photographs during your individual field-trip through Midtown and/or the East Village. Choose 8-12 of your favorite images, and put them in an order that creates a narrative. Let your narrative flow from the photos. Don’t think too hard. Your narrative can be as abstract as you want it to be. Bring your narrative as a PDF file to the next class. Practice your oral narrative presentation before you come to class!

Export your PDF in the smallest file size possible. Name your pdf: yourname_urbantxt.pdf

When you arrive to class, transfer your PDF file to the class computer’s desktop.

Be prepared to present your narrative to the class.

The word “used” urban type, pictured on an umbrella

Check out this grossly amazing  Warner Brothers billboard for Contagion!