Hello!
Welcome to Letters by Jia where my Typography module(mentored by Milly Singh) is documented through a series of letters.
Assignments
Letters
Claire Keane
h
noise dept.
will byers stan first human second
Cosmic Funnies

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣

Product Placement
Jules of Nature

JVL
Misplaced Lens Cap

tannertan36
taylor price
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

Love Begins

Kiana Khansmith
Sade Olutola
cherry valley forever
ojovivo

shark vs the universe
Cosimo Galluzzi
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States

seen from New Zealand
seen from Germany

seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from Finland
seen from Philippines
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Türkiye

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Argentina
seen from Malaysia

seen from France
seen from Spain

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States
@lettersbyjia
Hello!
Welcome to Letters by Jia where my Typography module(mentored by Milly Singh) is documented through a series of letters.
Assignments
Letters
Russian Constructivism
The assignment was to research your assigned design movement(for ex Dadaism, Pop art, etc) and analyze the typography used in the art pieces relevant to the movement. Based on our research we were supposed to create something in that particular style or inspired by that particular style and your artwork should have information about the assigned design movement.
I was assigned Russian Constructivism which started in 1915.
I was inspired by one of the most famous artworks by Alexander Rodchenko, a famous Constructivist artist; Books Please! In all branches of knowledge. Using the composition and colors I tried to concisely fit in the information about the design movement in the poster.
Key characteristics of Constructivism included:
Geometric forms
Abstract
Red, White and Blacks
Sans serif typefaces
Inspired by Cubism and Futurism
Influenced Bauhaus and De Stijl
Rejected detail oriented art
Represented urban and industrial society
Assignments
Word Expressive Art
Experimental Layouts
AR/Scanimation
Design Movement
Scanimation/AR
I was quite confused about the point of this assignment since it seemed pretty disconnected from the course of typography however after asking the faculty about it she explained how it was to move away from static layouts and explore more into dynamic mediums. With AR and metaverse being the upcoming trends in designing and honestly probably all aspects of human interaction.
Scanimation
Since my concept was perspective I was toying around with something related to an eye or an idea that could depict multiple perspectives.
This was the final result.
Here's it a bit slowed so you can see the frames a bit more clearly.
Total number of frames used: 36
Fonts used:
Franklin Gothic Heavy
Bauhaus 93
Cooper Black
Baskerville Old Face
Bodoni
Rockwell
I've tried to sort of show an evolution in fonts with the inclusion of slur, slab, san, and serif typefaces. The 'P' written in the font Bauhaus 93 eventually then turns into an eye representing the whole concept of perceiving of perspective and there being multiple of them.
Final Stuff
Previous iterations/Failures
Here the speed of the gif didn't convey the aspect of different perspectives as I had imagined it would. It just feels like a bland gif. The speed being too fast to actually comprehend anything.
Eventually I ended up scraping the idea of the 'P' in different fonts and used Bauhaus 93 only by converting it into an eye. However even this iteration seemed a little tasteless to me, there wasn't anything particularly catchy.
There was a bit more experimentation with the number of frames, speed and other miscellaneous factors.
18 total frames and then to loop the gif they are reversed so a total of 36 frames. I ended up choosing the amalgamation of the two concepts as my final one. The different Ps really drew attention and then eventually the eye gave a hint of the concept.
Augmented Reality
For the AR part of the assignment I had multiple ideas but I eventually ended up going with the one I had thought of first. There are multiple sculptures in real life where the sculpture only makes sense of through a particular angle. Through this concept I wanted to show that looking at a particular situation through different perspectives could really change our understanding of the situation itself.
Here as you can see a physical set up had been made and a 3D model had been created.
As you can see through a particular angle it forms the letter 'p'
While through the other angles it simply looks like random objects kept together.
View the 3D model here.
Magazine Spread
Based on our chosen topic we also had to do a magazine spread. So I went with a monochromatic theme.
Fonts used:
Tablet Gothic
Mrs Eaves
Garamond
Experimental Layouts
The point of this assignment was exploration in layouts and having the liberty to play with image and text.
We had to write a poem for the text.
Forest Floor:
A hungry python slithers across the floor,
Moss and water making it desire for more,
Tired in its pilgrimage about to weep,
It sees a human’s eyes closed with sleep,
And devours it in a nature so crude,
An interstellar event occurring for food.
-4:41 PM | 5-08-2022
Spiral
Word Expressive Art
Anxious:
When you are anxious, you are all over the place with no coherent thought. That feeling of anxiousness is the inspiration behind this type where multiple fonts were used and tweaked to show disorganization. The diagonal of the 'x' was tweaked to extend further than it is meant to portray that spike of anxiety one feels.
Letter 6 | 9th August, 2022
Dear Reader,
History of Typography is confusing at first.
History of Typography
First evidence of typography was found in cave paintings which eventually shifted to clay tablets where the tool used to write was reed. Ideograms or Egyptians hieroglyphs were the next signs of typography in history. There were 720 symbols. Cuneiforms came next with the number of symbols being cut down 560 and then came Phoenicians with the number being 28. Eventually as years passed and with more evolution came the roman lettering with 26 alphabets.
Serifs, sans serifs and everything in between:
Letter 5 | 8th August, 2022
Dear Reader,
Experimental layouts are daunting.
Poetry
(my forte)
We were supposed to write poetry based on one of the expressive words that we had illustrated, so I chose python.
Forest Floor
A hungry python slithers across the floor,
Moss and water making it desire for more,
Tired in its pilgrimage about to weep,
It sees a human’s eyes closed with sleep,
And devours it in a nature so crude,
An interstellar event occurring for food.
-4:41 PM | 5-08-2022
Experimental Layouts
Now that we had our text and our image(word expressive art), we were to combine the two and create some funky layouts with a whole lot of explorations. Definitely had a lot of failures for this one.
Letter 4 | 6th August, 2022
Dear Reader,
Fourth day. It was a Saturday so our hearts and sleep was hurting a bit from being snatched away from us but as usual the class was enjoyable and slightly nerve wrecking.
Fonts being made fun of
The point of these videos at least according to my understanding was to develop a sense that all fonts have personalities and idiosyncrasies.
Letter 3 | 5th August
Dear Reader,
Third day we went back to our roots to learn the correct vocabulary to be used in regards of typography and we learnt do's and dont's for layouts.
11 pt size
Simply put: perfect
50-60
Generally the number of words that should be in a line
Contrast
Create it In terms of size, fonts and colors
Letter 2 | 4th August, 2022
Dear Reader,
Day two started off with Ted Talks and evolved to challenging word expressive art and the following happened on 4th August, 2022.
Shiva Nallaperumal
Admirable type designer I would say. Interesting tales related to his work and typefaces/fonts.
The video gave us a glimpse into the type industry with the introduction of Ink Traps and his fonts which included the Kufic lettering inspired Calcula. Again, pretty admirable work I must say.
Letters by Jia
Letter 1
Letter 2
Letter 3
Letter 4
Letter 5
Letter 6
Letter 1 | 3rd August, 2022
Dear Reader,
This is the record of our first day in our typography module dated 3rd August, 2022.
Handygloves
or Type Anatomy.
Earned a star for the color coding.