Category: Evaluation

Mid Point Presentation – Sally Hope

A transcript of this presentation can be found here – Mid Point Presentation – Sally Hope Transcript

Feedback and Reflection

Sally Hope is a Designer and Educator with a specialism in Typography. She was happy for me to present my current project to her for feedback.

Overall this was a productive meeting. Right from the start Sally recognised the value inherent in design through play, commenting that “when you do go through these exercises, and you have a set of component parts, and then you start playing with them. I think, for me, that’s the most exciting thing, because then you start to get a real feel of how everything works together”. Sally was also able to understand my historic reference points in the designs of some of the forms, noting the presence of the “mark the hand” in relation to the angles of the strokes in the curves letterforms and the “Circle Square Triangle” forms within my EL Blocks 3d printed experimentations.

We discussed the importance of details and oddities within the forms, for instance the small circular notches cut out in some of the strokes in the curves experiment and how these relate directly the quirks and intricacies of different typefaces. It’s these quirks that set one typeface as being distinct from another.

There were a few areas Sally suggested I look at. One is the relationship between these components I am making and patterns. With being grounded in geometry, the exploration of them as abstract patterns may be interesting. The next point was to consider that the forms have both a positive and a negative, so when overlapping or combining the forms there may be further shapes that can be created. Finally she suggest I look at the work of, Graphic Designer, Sooji Lee who has similarly looked at deconstructing letterforms into their component parts.

In many ways the preparation for the presentation helped me to focus on what my aims for the project were, and also what is achievable within the module itself. Sally helped me to understand that often a project like this may start in a Masters and then grow further into a larger research project. Before the presentation I was worried that with working on the project for so long I might have lost sight of whether it was relevant/interesting to my target audience. However Sally’s enthusiasm for the project was a helpful incentive to feel like I am progressing in the right direction.

Sooji Lee – in process of_ making Bodoni typeface

Sooji Lee’s work, in process of_ making Bodoni typeface (2019) seems very relevant to my project. In it she has deconstructed the Bodoni alphabet into it’s component parts and created a physical tool from wood that you can use to attempt to drawn the Bodoni typeface. It is an intersting exploration of the difference between a letterform and a typeface, Lee writes “The two basic essences of a letter are ‘writable’ and ‘readable’. On the contrary, Typefaces can be read, but cannot be written.”

References

Timeline Evaluation

Original Gantt chart from my Proposal.

When my original timeline was developed, as part of the Proposal unit, it was at the end of a difficult period of the pandemic (Winter 2020) that had seen restrictions put in place on how I could access resources as well as external factors like having to care for my school age son when the schools were closed. There was however an element of naive positivity to the run up to the Christmas period where at the time we felt restrictions were going to be lifted and 2021 was in general going to be a more normal year. Writing this in March it is clear to me how naive that was after over 4 months of lockdown restrictions being enforced. But my proposal was based on the knowledge I had available to me then, rather than having the benefit of hindsight to steer my decisions.

Even without those restrictions in place, when I evaluate my project now I can see that my original timeline, and indeed my original proposal, was too focused on the production of an object and not on the development that is needed to create an object with meaning. Much of the timeline was about quickly producing a typeface and then marketing it. That’s not to say the research on my proposal has been wasted, it has provided me with an excellent foundation on to which to keep building. Also the core aim of the project, “Design a typeface”, has not changed. It is simply clear to me at this point that I will enjoy exploring the conceptual side of the creation further and that the project will be more theoretically sound if I re-evaluate the timeline and goals, rather than condensing the development of the typeface it my original timings.

At the start of this project I reflected on what I wanted my typeface to communicate. After my discussions with Chris Wilson about Typography, teaching and letterpress I feel looking into how methods of teaching and learning can be integrated into the project will be valuable. As would some further analysis of existing letterforms themselves.

Likewise the learning of a completely new medium, 3D printing, and the required digital tools to use it has taken up much of the time I had allocated to experiment with letterforms so that needs to be integrated into my new timeline.

My proposal was very focused on the commercial aspect of type production, I was going to make something to sell and evaluate it’s success via looking at sales reports and social media engagement. I am realising with my aims shifting to a more educational output these won’t be worthwhile metrics for the success of the project so I need to consider new methods for the evaluation of my final product.

Finally with the restrictions being in place and the disruption to my home, academic and professional life, I have found it much harder than I had originally considered it would be to allocate what I feel is a substantial enough amount of time each week to my Masters project. This is part is due to me choosing a subject that I am passionate about and one that I want to continue on past the submission as a professional project. With that in mind, my new timeline factors in the fact that my teaching will be coming to an end in May so I will be able to dedicate more time to the project.