3:2 Type Workshop

Derek asked us to bring a newspaper to this workshop and started off by playing some crazy music and told us to create two pieces by cutting up the newspaper. One piece would be an ordered side filled with symmetry and aesthetics and another piece would be chaotic where nothing would be planned and you just did whatever the hell you wanted to.

We were then told to choose one side to cut up in to A5 and A6 sizes. I chose my chaotic side.

We then chose one A5/A6 piece to recreate from two large sheets of paper filled with large and small bolded quotes from the typographist Jan Tschichold.

I created two posters from the large texts

and we all stuck them up on the walls to showcase our creations.

I then chose this one to digitally recreate in Adobe Indesign under a specific set of rules: we can only use 3 different type sizes, all a multiple of 7 and it has to be black and white.

Derek then told us we had to finish the posters for our next session but that we could only add three more elements.

Here is my progress from the piece I ended with in the workshop to my finished piece:

I rearranged the structure slightly at first and made the required text about the exhibition much smaller and to the right, then played around with sizing. I initially used lines to help me make sure the words were straight but I liked them so much I decided to incorporate them in my three elements. I also used colour to help me better visualise what I wanted to make but I tried not to rely on it as eventually I would have to go back to black and white, which could change the way my outcome looks. I also struggled with the colour of the text because I wanted whatever letters were off the black bar to be black and the letters on the black bar to be white but to still come out as full readable words. Unfortunately, I don't think InDesign offers a way to change half a letter's colours and so I decided to just have half of the words cut off but I like it better this way as it's still readable but looks cool.

In the end my three elements were to have a long thick bar going across the page, a small thin line going halfway through and creating a 3D effect with the word 'Of'.

I also experimented with finding a way to make the 'Of' stand out more and created another final piece that uses the lines, the 3D effect and the box as my three elements.