It's All in the Type...

So I thought I'd feature some more of my work on my blog since I'm getting into this more. 

Typography is one of my greatest passions when it comes to design, it can be used to express so many thoughts and messages and there are literally no boundaries to how you want to use the words to display your messages. Working in a college you can often find yourself stuck a particular set of rules and methods when it comes to designing college resources however sometimes, you can find other methods and techniques to make your work stand out a lot more. 

One of my favourite pieces I have done so far at the college in the line of Typography was a poster to advertise free trips to New York for A-Level students that are studying at the college. I pondered for a long time on what the most effective and eye catching method would have been to advertise and promote this offer and after looking at some past college materials I noticed a hugely distinctive lack of typography that had been used in the college in the past. From there I seen my opportunity to be creative and use my initiative. 

This was the final poster that I produced from the brief that I had been given. Rather than just going for a coloured background with a drop shadow and a few logos I felt that displaying an image of New York itself made the offer seem more real and possible, like anyone had a chance to win the trip. 

The fonts that I used were a mixture of weights, serif and sans-serifs and also script fonts. The mixture of the different typefaces helps to pick out the key bits of information that you want the reader to see first, this helps to pull your audience in and also it means your message can be read from a distance and pull the reader in closer. 

The second typography method that I used whilst working in the college so far was for a set of motivational posters to be placed in classrooms. Again I felt that there was a huge lack of Typography within the college so I carried out some more research on different Typography methods. One that I found had a particular feel to it, the way the letters had been constructed and arranged made you want to read further down the page. See what you think...

To create this I used a Serif font and wrote my message in Illustrator and used the expand tool to split the words, resize and order them how I wanted them. From there I used a series of techniques to cut the bits of the letters out that I did not want, the most effective was the Pathfinder tool. By using the Pathfinder I managed to trim out parts of letters where other letters would overlap. I feel that this is what makes you want to read more, it's a constant search for the missing parts of the letters. 

Once I had trimmed my text and arranged the words into the right order and had them placed in an order that made sense, I opened the file in Photoshop to apply the texture to give it that slightly more vintage and traditional feel with a slightly modern twist. 

As always I would love to hear any feedback that anyone may have, I will soon be setting up a dedicated email, Facebook and Twitter to go along with this blog and I would love to get as much interaction with readers as possible. 

I'd also like to give a huge thanks to That Working Girl who has helped me along the way and give me advice on blogging. 

As always feel free to contact me on;

matthewlawson12@msn.com

Women Designers and Computer Arts

So whilst I was on holiday last week I read a brilliant article in one of the magazines I have subscribed to recently Computer Arts. 

The article was about women working in the Graphic Design industry and went on to describe an instance when a woman designer felt alienated from her work simply because of her gender, and this got me thinking. Should we be surprised if we walk into an Design studio and see a team full of women? I think the answer is absolutely not. If you walked into a mine or a war zone I would say that it's definitely not a place for a woman to be however, some of the most creative people I've ever met have been female. 

Graphic Design shouldn't be an industry that should be defined by age, height, gender, skin colour etc. It's a creative industry and if an individual has a particular skill-set that makes them an incredible designer their creative opinion should be valued anywhere. Just because they're a female doesn't mean that we should walk into an agency and instantly turn around and leave when we can't see a male designer in sight. 

In the article the author describes a time when she was trying to solve a problem on a job and she quietly mentioned the solution to a male designer who was on the team as she didn't have the confidence to speak to the room. As soon as she told him, he proposed the idea to the rest of the team and stole all of the glory, feeling like the king of design. 

I find it wrong that he couldn't have credited the author of the article that it was her idea and that she deserved the credit. It wouldn't have took much to say would it?

"Oh by the way, my colleague has just come up with an idea, what do you think of this..."

It would have been the most respectful thing to do. 

It doesn't matter who a person is, what matters is their ideas and quality of work. It's the contributions that they make to the world of design and the inspiration that they can give to other designers.

I'd love to hear other peoples opinions on this so please don't be afraid to drop me an email and let me hear your thoughts. Also don't be afraid to contact me on any feedback or if you just want a general chat about design, I'd love to hear from people who read these articles. 

matthewlawson12@msn.com