Graphics: Hand Rendered Letterforms

Having done a lot of work on the Macs in college, that isn't all there is to graphics and as such I was tasked with producing an A2 sheet of hand rendered letters. I took that idea and wanted to try something else so I produced 3 A3 sheets instead. As I wanted to have one with the letters coloured, one with the background and one with my theme which has been running throughout my graphics work, 'Honest Is The Best Policy'.

Above is the first sheet I produced. To create these sheets, I used the light box in college with a large array of different printed out letters on a4 sheets in a wide range of fonts. With this first one I was a little hesitant to have a lot of overlapping letters as I wasn't too sure how it would look once coloured in but with each sheet I added more closeness between the letters. I found this sheet the easiest out of all 3 as I had the least inking in. But I like the way it turned out, but prefer the black background over the white as seen below.

The 2nd sheet I produced, was the opposite of the first. Instead of focusing on inking the shapes this time its was the back that I inked around the letters. I feel this looks a lot nicer in my opinion. As well with this piece I felt a little more experimental so I tried adding more letters which would overlap with one another. Looking back at it now it feels like I added just the right amount as the piece doesn't feel to cluttered. If anything I could have added another letter under the 'C' as that's the only space that really bothers me looking back at it.

Finally I produced a piece with my cliche phrase across it. I wanted to do this mainly because all my other work I've tried to do a piece relating to this. However I don't really think this piece works as the letters seem to cluttered together to really let the phrase pop off. It would have looked better if I had inked the background instead of the letters I think. But maybe its just my eyes thinking that as I prefer the clear letters.
If i were to do it again I'd make 2 phrase sheets each using different letters for the words to space them out alittle more and having 2 would also allow me to produce 1 inked letters and 1 inked background.
Overall I really enjoy working with markers and pens as its something I feel I'm adapt to having always had an interest in painting and illustration. It was very nice to step back from the Macs and work on something else, in a more traditional style.

Expressive Typography

At the start of one of my last introduction lessons to Graphics, as a warm up exercise I was tasked with producing an A2 sized sheet of Expressive Typography. Expressive typography in this sense was to express the meaning of the words given to me by only using the letters of said words. Such as the word 'Crash' could be represented by having the letters falling down or two words of 'Crash' almost crashing into one another.

As seen above I used such words as:
Space
Repetition
Elimination
Compression
Expansion
Popcorn
Imperfect
Addition
Echo
Separate
Mutation

As such I tried to use the meanings of these words to create some unique expressive typography. Some words were easier then others. Such as Expansion and Compression were pretty simple in the fact you could make the letters expand or be wrote closer to one another.
Mutation and Elimination were a lot trickier. Trying to find a way to show the meaning but also still allowing the word to be read. In mutations case I ended up writing the word twice but slightly ajared to the side almost giving it an imperfect shadow. Like it had grew extra letters from itself, which worked really well I thought. With Elimination, as I got closer to the end of the word I started not writing part of the letters, as if they had be removed through some sort of 'elimination'.
Over all I really enjoyed this exercise as it made me think and got my mind set to thinking straight away.