The second workshop with Nick was aimed at developing some of the stronger ideas we had from the first session, with the scope to enlarge the designs up to a scale where each character had its own A4 sheet.
I decided that I wanted to continue with my 'Undefined' concept because I felt there was a lot more depth to that idea than the others. I started by using the same method as I did on the smaller scale of just shading out a rough shape of each of the letters, even though creating some of the curves that form the bowls of shapes like the d's, e's and a's.
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| Unliked development |
In an attempt to develop this idea and add depth to it, I wanted to add some different areas that would be a different colour. But soon after starting this idea, I regretted it as I didn't like how it looked, it looked too patchy and didn't really add any depth to the sketches. So I decided that I wanted to just stuck to my original methodolgy.
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| Initial outcomes, phase 2 |
Soon, Nick said out loud (to the group in general or to someone sat at my table) that they didn't have to be perfect and could be ripped up or smudged as much as we wanted, and this gave me an idea to smudge some of the outside of the shape, this would soften up some of the shape, add some depth and blur the boundaries of the shape, make it slightly less defined. I liked this idea, because it fitted with the message and the aesthetic I was aiming for.
I really liked progressing with this idea because I think that it has a good message, too much of human life now is about defining something, finding labels and categorizing everything, but sometimes somethings arise that have no definition, no exact meaning or catergory.
The next stage for me was to try and make the lettering more legible, especially at a distance, as the greys of pencil lead might struggle to be readable at a longer distances. So firstly I tried to photocopy the sketches, but this had little to no effect on most of my work. So Nick advised me to scan them in and boost the threshold or the contrast in photoshop. Which is what I did my scanning them in and changing the levels in photoshop, to darken some of the greys and midtones.
I like the outcome of this step of the process as all the shapes have an increased legibility, whilst retaining some of the roughness from the sketching stage as well as some of the blurriness from the smudging around the outside of the shape.
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| I |
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| a |
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| d |
