Found Letterform Project

Grid Array
Typography 1 Fall 2006
Instructor: Joan Dobkin

Project Objectives:
1. Explore the environment for unconventional found letterforms
2. Explore the use of unconventional typographic tools to create designs
3. Create images with non-digital techniques

Project Description:
Students were instructed to collect two different types of found letterforms. The first, accidental letterforms, are not true characters but entities that look like them. They were to be captured photographically. The second, letterform objects, include character from gravestone carvings and 3-D signage. Once an entire alphabet was collected, students arranged the letterforms in an 11” by 14” grid array.

Design Rationale:
I collected my letterforms from several different sources. First I searched through my old photographs from various trips I’ve taken over the years. Second, I explored my house for various objects that take on the same shape as a letter. Finally I went out to a graveyard in my home town and rubbed roughly fifteen characters from the carvings on the stones. Once the alphabet was complete, I created a grid in which to arrange the letterforms. I began by setting the margins to .5” on the top and bottom, .75” on the left side of the page, and 2” on the right side in order to create an asymmetrical art board with dramatic white space on one side. Within the art board I created a seven column by seven row grid structure. I chose to place all the captions on the furthest right grid modules, aligned with the bottom of each row of images, in order to maximize visual hierarchy and legibility. I then put either four or five characters in each row in a somewhat random fashion until it seemed aesthetically pleasing to me.

Links

Quotes

"It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures."
Vincent Van Gogh

"What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is in harmony parallel with nature."
Paul Cezanne

"Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art."
Leonardo da Vinci

"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way--things I had no words for."
Georgia O'Keeffe

"Uh, gee, great."
Andy Warhol

"The modern artist is working with space and time and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating."
Jackson Pollock

"Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist."
Edward Hopper