Creative Typography - Letter Cliches in Illustrator

Following on from my work in Photoshop with making digital letters and using said letter with changed forms to create digital words around well known cliches. I used the word 'Honesty is the Best Policy' and carrying on with that phrase I moved over from Photoshop to Illustrator.
From my cliches i took the word 'Honesty' and then played around with manipulating that word further with various Illustrator techniques.

First things first in Illustrator I first off used the type tool to write the word 'Honesty' and then went onto effects and then adding different filters as you can see by the first photos. I played around with such effects as Cutout [being the first image], Radial Blur [3rd image], Warp Bulge [Last image]. I really like the effect you can get out of the last image on the first photos [Warp: Bulge] as you have a lot of ability to turn the letters in whichever way you like.
In the 2nd photo i started to manipulate my word by using the transforms effect. This is an effect i really enjoy as you can get some many different and unique effects just by playing with the angel setting alone. Couple that with the different scales and movements you have with the horizontal and vertical you have a wide array of different effects. So i took my hand to creating spiral effects which I think turned out very well however i found it very time consuming to get the desired effect I wanted but now i have the settings i can go back anytime to recreate it.
Next I experimented further with some of the other distort and transform effects and this is where i found some i really loved. In order Roughen, Pucker & Bloat, Tweak, Twist and then finally another 3D and another transform. I didn't really enjoy the 3D effect as it seemed a little to clunky to get to work as depending on the font it can block out some of the letter form. I mostly enjoy the randomness of the Roughen and Plucker & Bloat effects, I like how just when only slightly added it gives a fuzz/buzz effect and when cranked all the way up it gives such a detailed explosion of lines and shapes.
The second last thing I experimented with in Illustrator was adding brushes to the outline of text which can be seen on my final photo. This was a very tricky process as a lot of the brushes added effects that overlaid the text in such a was made the word unreadable which is an effect i wasn't aiming for this time.
Lastly in Illustration my aim was to manipulate my words which had a artistic brush added to it further by adding symbols. For the symbols used in my image above are from the grime vector pack and dot pattern vector pack. I really love the ink feel from the grime pack as it works well with the artist brush added onto the image, it gives the image a lot more depth and wild feel. As well as that the drip symbols help make the word feel a lot more alive as if its really been drawn.

Creative Typography - Letter Cliches from Photoshop

Carrying on with my creative typography [Part 1, Part 2] the next step was to take my new alphabet created in photoshop from my oriental photos and to create a word/phrase out of it. For this I worked with using cliches. I used the cliche 'Honesty is the best policy' As i have always felt this saying held a lot of weight behind it and would work well with my different letter forms as they no longer hold there original form. I feel with this phrase it add an extra element to it as the phrase itself is very much centred around not lying and always behind honest with ones self and others around you. By hiding it behind a new layer of language it creates that wall around the phrase showing what effect it has on the reader/person trying to break down the lies to get to the honest truth.

Honesty.

Honesty is the Best Policy.

I really liked the way the final letter forms looked together in an A-Z style but now I've formed a word i don't really like how some of the letters work next to each other. I feel this is because of my choice of harsh vibrant colours but what i really love about it is the way some of the letter forms have been lost making it harder to read the words giving this saying a lot more weight behind it! I'd decently want to go back and revisit this and add a consistent colour scheme throughout the whole piece to see what sort of change it would have on the piece.
Looking at the single word of honest as above with the 'HITBP' i feel the lose of letter forms works really well with the message of hiding honesty as so many of people do. However unlike the colour scheme in the 'HITBP phrase' above, i really like the way the colour worked in the 'Honesty' piece. I didn't plan on this and just got lucky as i used the 2 letter forms going 1 cutout filter, 1 threshold and repeating. I fill this styled worked a lot better then the use of the same style for the whole word.

Creative Typography - Part One

I really enjoy working on computers i like the amount of freedom programs such as photoshop give you to be creative through a multitude of different means. In my graphics class we are creating creative typography via experimenting with a variety of graphics and photographic techniques to produce a series of creative typography images, firstly consisting of individual letter forms and/or words based loosely around cliches.
So first things first after a brief introduction i was set loose in the college to collect images of A-Z letters forms within the environment.

[Above 4 shots of Letters C, T, P & O] - Next week we're compiling all letters a-z onto a single layer in photoshop and all the images will be shown in that post [Link Coming here soon]

At first i found this rather difficult as i just kept seeing actual letters on signs and the walls around college buts once i let my mind free a little bit i found it easier to spot letters being formed in everyday objects whether that being an 'A' as a bike rake, an 'O' in a light or even as seen above a 'P' formed from the hose on a fire extinguisher. I really enjoy having the freedom taking my own photos gives and coupling that with photoshops the possibilities to creative great works is endless.
My favourite photo i took was without a doubt the 'O' and without any editing i feel the photo in its self has some really strong composition. [All photos shown about are straight out of the camera no editing]

The next step was to import these photos into photoshop and start manipulating with different filters, colour effects, blurs etc. One of the main points we aimed for was that the images didn't have to keep there original letter forms in turn creating something completely new, even a new language if you will.
Below are the Manipulations for my letter 'C' and 'O'

 Filter: Glowing Edges then hue change.

Threshold Change.

Filter: Cutout and a purple hue shift.

 Filter: Dry Brush and an Aqua hue shift.

 Threshold Change.

Filter: Cutout - Aqua hue shift.

After A LOT of changing my mind with different filters and trying to find one i liked i created an array of different letter forms from my originals photos. With each letter i made 3 different types of creations the first being a threshold change so i had a black and white A-Z with varying types of legibility. The 2nd was to apply a cutout filter to each letter and create a very abstract sort of piece giving each an unique colour and finally the third was very much just a filter i felt looked good on the photo and i added different colours to each to try and give them a very neon feel.
With 'O' being my favourite photo i had taken i didn't really want to edit the photo at all in 3 different types and just to leave it on its own as i feel the photo is very strong as it was. But once i added a cutout filter to it i was very much surprised at how much i loved how simplistic the new 'O' shape was while staying true to the original photo but being ever so interesting. I feel i have very strong photography skills but something about taking a real life object such as a ceiling light and turning it into a very abstract piece without really meaning to have it turn out as such made me very excited to carry on developing ideas in photoshop.

Part Two - Click to see final A - Z pieces and original photos.