Expressive Words
Yesterday I came across Karly Barrett's post on designing expressive words where she had set herself the task of exploring the 'expressive quality of words through typography'.
Having seen these I have to admit I was instantly inspired to have a go myself and as part of my AS Multimedia coursework I have been looking at the connections between photography and typography within certain media, specifically looking at Neville Brody as one of my sources of inspiration, I will be able to incorporable this little experiment into that - which makes me a very happy chappy as I confess to being really quite behind on the whole thing.
Lonely
I picked the word lonely to use simply for the instant connection something in my brain made between the way we stress the 'o' when saying it and the idea of being lonely and secluded.
Pushing the letter away from the others may seem a little obvious I guess but I think it works well. The spacing on either side is deliberately uneven as I felt when they were even it gave the idea of being secluded from thing as opposed to when it was uneven which i thought created three distinct parts to the word instead of two (sorry if that doesn't make sense). The font used here was Bodoni MT.
Jump
Jump was quickly thought up and quickly put together but again I think it worked fairly well.
The rounded appearance of Century Gothic gives it a less serious edge (as opposed to what a stronger serif font may) to tie along with the them of jumping and the 'm' being not above the peaks of each other letters keeps an intentional constraint on it. If the word had been something looser such as bubble, flying etc I would have used the opposite technique however this way the idea that jumping has an inherent limit is promoted.
Extreme
I became a bit stuck with the word 'extreme' mainly because I wanted to create something 'wilder' than what I have settled on.
The word is capitalised to give it a more 'in your face' edge than the others and the italicised Century Gothic gives it a very sharp on the edge appearance. It's interesting here how the case of Century Gothic can change so powerfully what effect is has.
Second Smile
Update: So here's my second attempt at the word smile, this time keeping to the rules! I'm not massively impressed about how it turned out but I really can't think how to do it any other way. A challenge for you maybe?
The font used was Imprint MT Shadow.
First Smile
Click here to see the first attempt
Smile being manipulated into the shape of an actual smile might be a bit of a cliche but I thought after using the pen tool to give the effect of the mouth being open the image became far more desirable. Admittedly the use of both the pen tool and the warped text tool may bring this more into the logo market however.
Well that's where I stopped for tonight. Unlike Karly I didn't set myself any limits in which fonts I could use, I just sat down and had a bit of a play with Photoshop for a few minutes. I would love some feedback on what you think of these, I'm definitely not the most imaginative person out there and no doubt many of you will have better ideas in your head than what I came up with so you're welcome to share them using the comment option below!
But you've changed the exercise with smile. You can't repeat the word, nor change the shape of the letterforms, am I right? That being said, I have no idea how to do smile. But I'll try and let you know.
I've stuck a second attempt at it into the post, not very original again but better than the first attempt I think. If you decide to take a stab at it yourself you're welcome to comment back with the results!
I like your take on this exercise. Lonely and jump are both nicely done. Your second attempt at smile is much better than the first -- though I'm not sure about the font choice, the letters do have a nice gleam on them.
As for extreme. When you consider the word according to this definition: "going to great or exaggerated lengths," you might think about exaggerating one of the letters by making it a large size and heavy font weight while the rest of the word is extremely tiny. Just a thought.
I'm back with my reply. You can check it out on my blog Tell me what you think.
Your second attempt at smile plays by the rules, that's for sure! And those letters really look happy. I tried writing smil smaller, and beneath it, a big lowercase e to suggest the smiling part :) you can try it, but it doesn't look that good. the upper part of the e (the counter) looks very sad and spoils the fun.
Anyway, check out my other words! I've subscribed to your blog, so I'l be back soon.
I really like your idea about 'extreme'. I think I had chosen to do it how i did because I was thinking of extreme as 'extreme sports', if I had looked up that definition I think I would have done it differently! Thanks for your comment also :)
vlad,
Don't worry about the html link, it's going to work as soon as I add that in a couple of hours (I'm not running a blog software, it's custom coded so there are still things I simply forgot about).
One typeface? Ouch..haha, I'll see what time I get and might jave a go. I'll take a look at yours now!
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