Type Figure
THE GOAL of this object was to challenge us to utilize type in a way where it forms an image without distorting the text in any way. I had to choose a part of the duck's body to show the original image while the rest of the body would be filled with text. The text had to be a short sentence, five to seven words long, and had to be something original. I originally wanted my phrase to be "I love you more than you'll know", but that didn't work in the end and I used "Please TRY NOT TO feed me bread." I thought this was cute since it relates to the duck and is educational. This project was not easy and challenged me to pick the perfect typefaces that would work to form the rest of the bird's body.
Research & Brainstorming
I originally wanted to do a rat for my project, but the best stock photos that had the full rat in the image I had to pay for and I didn't feel like committing to that. I then decided to look into a seahorse and duck for my next animals, which there were plenty of copyright free images to choose from.
To be honest, the most important reference I had for figuring out how to do this project was a previous student's artwork, the flamingo image. There were two other bird examples from past student's but they had a different method of creating the feathers that I wasn't going for.
For my first blocked type figure, the seahorse, I started off by outlining all of the details. Finding out soon enough that this is not the way to block out the figure, I started over again and blocked out only the dark areas of the seahorse. After that I started quickly on filling those dark areas with text. I kept in mind that I wanted to use the typeface Papyrus or a font similar to it to give a gritty look. I also wanted to use a bold serif font to become outliners and show the more familiar areas of the seahorse.
Blocked Type Figure #2
For my second blocked type figure, I went through many trials trying to figure out how to make this duck work. I only included these three since they relate to my final type figure.
As you can see, they look messy. The first duck is shaped like a duck's body, but there are elements and shapes that are not as defined as I would like them to be.
The second image shows more elements that I ended up going with in the end like the head, back and feet. The feathers are outlined but still messy and not well defined. I knew that the head part would work so I was hopeful and pushed on.
Initial Computer Area Studies #1 and #2
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I had a lot of problem areas in my initial studies. The first one was the head. I made the type look like feathers by changing the point sizes from small to large to small again. I crowded it to the point where it was hard to see and the point size was too small. The way I fixed this was easy; removing most of the lines of type and increasing the point size.
The next problem area were the feet. I struggled to form shapes with the feet, even with the blocked type figure's help. I tried multiple typefaces to fix this issue, but the webbed toes were always a problem. I ended up going back to my initial design in the blocked figure and just filling the feet with type instead of trying to make shapes out of certain characters. It might be lazy but it works.
The last problem area were the feathers. They were always a problem throughout this process, but just by deleting things, I ended up finding the solution. I had a lot of paths and bold typefaces trying to create feathers, but it never formed a shape. I ended up by accident just forming a strange curved shape with smaller sentences leading up. I ended up slowly removing lines of type and found that I already had the perfect wing shape and called it a day.