We will be working on Project 01 – the Visual Alphabet, and this is the first step: Observation and Creation. In this first step, what are we going to do? We are designing an alphabet made by photographing objects in the world around us. We are going to do 20 initial concepts and 3 proof of concept ideas. Why are we doing it? Design isn’t always about creating something new. In fact, most times it is taking something familiar and showing it in a new light. Creating a visual alphabet will challenge your observational, creative and technical skills
It’s important to do 20 concepts or more than a few so that you make sure that you have a concept or several concepts that would work and be interesting. It’s not uncommon to have students come back with several in the class having the same idea. An example of this in the past would be writing with light, getting a gloss stick or a flash light or something like that, doing a long explosion with the camera. We see those every semester and so that is an example of a concept that exists in a public conscious and you want to make sure that you have enough ideas that your ideas don’t fall into that category. Once we get the concepts, we are going to do proof of concept ideas. The reason we are doing 3 proof of concept ideas is to make sure that the ideas will work and to give you an option of 3 things to choose from.
We are going to examine and explore the world around us to find objects that inherently or with a small adjustment can become letters. Anything could be a letter, find and document 20 different ideas with photography or sketches. This page shows an example of what a work of page could be, and it is serving suggestions. You’re responsible for designing your own workbook, so you need to organize and show the 20 different sketches in an organized 20. The workbooks are going to be fairly extensive by the end of this semester, but if you take a little bit of time every day and plan the pages, then it’d be just the matter of compiling the pages at the end.
Here’s an example of an option for creating the letter. In the first example, you see a cookie and if we could just take a bite out of the cookie, you see it looks like a letter C. That’s much more interesting that laying down several cookies in the shape of a letter C. This is kind of like pixels or pieces. This is one of the most common ways that students try to do this. Look for letter forms that are adherently part of the object you’re looking at, so in this example, the cookie with a bite out of it would be a better example.
When you have 20 ideas, we’re going to go to the proof of concept stage, and how are we going to do that? You’re going to choose three of the concepts and produce 5 different letters to prove that the concept can be used to create a complete alphabet. When you get ready to take the photographs for this, one important thing to remember is you’re going to remove the background from the photographs, so if you use good lighting, bedroom light or reading light or take them outside on a white background, then it makes the background much easier to remove. Removing the background will be something you have to do. When you get ready, choose 3 of your ideas and then photograph 5 letters from each of the alphabets. This will help you know whether this alphabet is going to be producible. Sometimes you have a great idea that will work for one letter but is very difficult to do anything else with it. So 5 letters should be enough for you to have an idea what you should do. Then you need to document your process. You’ve done the major exploration for this, and we’re going to do the documentation.
This is going to be a process blog, and this is due before the beginning of Lesson 2. When you make the process blog, that’s what other students and the instructor can comment on. Then you need to make work on each of your team members’ comments within a 24-hour period. Then you need to compile together your workbook pages; the workbook pages are going to be due at the end of Project 1. Do them and get them ready to go. Once again, save your workbook pages because at the end of the semester, you will need to compile a complete workbook. Now we’re going to do an exercise to get to know one another a little bit, and this will be class introduction.
In the class introduction, what are we going to do? We’re going to write an introduction about yourself for the other class members on the Class Introduction Discussion Board. Once you’ve written introduction about yourselves, make it approximately 200 words, tell us some interesting things about yourselves that would be unusual, for example your favorite candy bar, or your favorite breakfast cereal, or the strangest family vacation that you went on.
Think of something fun that you can share with the class that would help you be memorable. Once the Discussion Board is made, you need to make comment to at least 4 class members who have something in common with you, and this will help us to get to know one another a little bit better and for some introduction. For today, that’s what you need to do, and we’ll see you at the beginning of Lesson 2. Have a great time!