Wednesday 12 November 2014

OUGD404 - Design Principles - Negative Space

We were shown lots of clever ideas of negative space, most famously the FedEx logo which has a hidden arrow between the E and x. All of the designs look so simple yet when it comes to creating negative space images yourself it can be quite difficult.

Our Task:

After looking at the examples of ‘negative space’ both in typographic terms and even in photographic terms the workshop is to choose a word i.e. HALT (Typographic) Upper or lower case and see what element you can add to use with or replacing the identified space to create an image suggested by the chosen word/element.

Within the time available, you may render this in any way you choose, if you wish to Mac up, and you feel you have time, go for it otherwise by hand if it suits you as a creative.

I started with some general ideas and just tried out different things, like for 'beast' I tried to incorporate an open mouth with sharp teeth within the counter of the b. I liked my first design of animal - extending the l to give it a tail and make the a look like a lions head but I didn't know how to take it any further or even simplify it. I think I was overcomplicating things and wanted to stick with a short word so I decided to experiment with the word 'Pen'



I stuck with the fountain pen nib idea and tried to incorporate it into all the negative space of the letters. But once again I was overcomplicating it. I even tried lowercase which looked a lot better than uppercase but something was still off. So I just put the pen nib in the aperture of the e and instantly it worked!



So I then drew my final idea with helvetica and created it using Illustrator. 

I also tried doing it without the nib detail which I don't think works as well because it creates a funny shape that not everyone would recognise as the end of a fountain pen. 

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