Jill Ashley Art & Design Blog

Wednesday, 28 December 2011

Letters

Letter A,
Alphabet
Peter Blake, 2007
demonstrates his passion for collecting letters and imagery.

Shutters
Ben Eine, 2002- 2007
Made transition from guerilla graffitti to commissioned compositions

Alphabet for Alphaville

Scott Tepin, 2008

One storey urban dwellings which are animated with futuristic fantasy.

The Bastard Word
Fiona Banner, 2006-7
Images of fighter planes

Mapplethorpe Alphabet II
Amandine Alessandra, 2009
Vinyl gloves, a scanner and key means of communication, her hands

Alphabet of caught fish
Joanne Young, 2009
Forlorn fish which have been skewered by peculiarly shaped fish hooks. Grotesque tone as fish not hooked conventiallu through the lip.

Exclamation Point, from Exclamation Point, Comma and Question Mark
Andrea D'Aquine
Explores the imagined personalities and neurosis of various punctuation marks. Surreal images which maintain a darkly comic tone. Similar to David Shrigley and Edward Gorey.

Happiness is a Warm Gun

Matthias Ernstberger, 2005

Poster was part of a series documenting punctuation symbols, where each symbols was celebrated on a poster created by a different designer. Ernstberger was given the apostrophe, whose job it is to eliminate letters. Hence he chose to represent this with a revolver.

My collage of imagery of the letter 'o', never ending and constant

Typography - Back to basics

Before the widespread use of computers, individual metal type was used. The capital letters were kept in the 'uppercase' and the small letters in the lower case.

Serif Typeface

The serif on each letter comes from the time when letters were carved out of stone. Widely used in books and newspapers, easier to read a serif typeface for a prolonged period of time.

Sans Serif Typeface

Designed by Eric Gill the sculptor, this is one of the best known Sans Serif typefaces. Used by the BBC and the Underground.

Script Typeface

Designed to look like handwriting and have a more elaborate uppercase letters, never to be used as uppercase only.

Spacing

Flat sides of the capitals fit together

Rounder sides of the 'o' look odd measured out

Have to space out letters visually to make it look right

Circular letters such as 'O' sit slightly above and below the base line - more visually pleasing.

Descenders such as 'g' and 'y' fall below the baseline whereas the ascender 'f' rises above, meeting the capital letter height.

Using the main theme of my project, I experimented with different fonts.

Brushscript

Academy Engraved

Blackmoor

Blair

Shell Roundhouse

Experimental Textiles

Melting Tyvek: hovering a heat gun over the material for a few seconds, making it ripple and bubble away from the heat source. Untreated Tyvek:

Painted acrylic onto Tyvek, and then applied the heat. Paint makes Tyvek more resistant to heat and also darken with more heat applied:

Encased synthetic fabrics into a plastic wallet. Gives a rippled effect and melts through to material:

Used a soldering iron on synthetic fabrics and semi transparent plastic bags. The solder cuts but also joins, giving a spontaneous method, reveals paper as wont cut through:

Coccoon Stripping

Laid down strands of the natural fibres onto baking paper, sprayed with a light mist of water and covered with another sheet of baking powder. Ironed to compact fibres, can be sewn into.

Gummed silk fused with felt. Spread out the gummed silk, laid felt ontop and sprayed and ironed as before, rougher texture. can also be sewn into.

Making felt. Lay down fibres thinnly and then for the next layer , lay alternatively. Do 3-4 layers. Spray with water and use soap, cover in bubble wrap and massage so fibres fuse together Put in Hot and then cold water, iron and leave to dry.