ART 392 / Week 3

Week 3 — Assignment “3 x 3 Compositions”

Project 1 1B

Discuss + Studio due Sunday (end-of-day). Comments on other people’s posts due Tuesday.

Project 1. This week you will further expand your “typographics toolbox” as a collection of graphics—by forming more compositions in Illustrator, creating variations of reversed black and white and using different color combinations, and setting your word in three ways.

1/
Discuss:

1. First complete your studio assignment and then write about your progress in the comment space below (200 words). Questions: What typefaces are you using in the selected Illustrator comps? Who designed them? What is your word? What are your trying out? Include a link to your project on onedrive.
Reply to at least two other people’s posts (below). Due Tuesday.

2/
Studio:

1. Finish creating a selection of individual typographic compositions each as a 3 x 3 inch artboard in Illustrator — in black and white and reversed. Your goal is to have many variations for each letter in your word to choose from later.
2. Create additional variations from the original black and white versions — duplicating and changing orientation and working with color (this is endless so develop a rich inquiry). See Illustrator steps in the screen shots below.
3. Set your word out in three ways. Duplicate the desired artboards and visualize the word differently by aking different choices.
4. Document your process—take screenshots of your desktop/Illustrator workspace and upload. Alsopackage your Illustrator design file, make a PDF, and upload all to onedrive.
   

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Links:

Thinking with Type, Ellen Lupton
Typographic Milestones

 

 

 

 

Illustrator steps:
Place photo on its own layer. Name the layer, Photos. Scale the photo to fit the 3×3 in artboard. Lock the layer.
Create a new layer, name it Letter (K). Set type, scale it and manipulate orientation—to mimic your photo composition sketch.
Draw a square box, that is 3×3 in over your individual artboard. With both the square box and the text box selected, choose Object > Clipping Mask > Make.

To reverse black and white:
Duplicate the artboard for which you wish to create a variation.
Select the letter with the text tool, and change the color (to white—or—to other color choices in your other variations).**it works using the text tool.
Create a sublayer within Letter (K), name it Background. Draw a square box, 3×3 in, fill it with black. This becomes the background and the letter is white on top. Make sure the order of the layers relays top down order.
Duplicate and repeat steps, for other two-color combinations.

To change the color of the counterforms:
Duplicate the artboard for which you wish to create a variation. Select the text letter. Create outlines from your text letters.
Open the Pathfinder window and use the divide tool to separate letters and spaces.
Use the direct selection arrow tool to select the inner spaces.

You can create immense complexity with multiple color scenarios that involve deconstructing form and counterform—i.e. different colors in the inner spaces of the letter or different colors for different parts of the letter.