Type as Image
Exclaim
Typography 1 Fall 2006
Instructor: Joan Dobkin
Project Objectives
1. Communicate ideas typographically
2. Enhance design process skills
3. Understand both the form and meaning of letters
4. Use typeface to communicate visual information
Project Description
Students were asked to create a composition that visually communicates the meaning of a word. Formal qualities they were asked to explore include: typeface, placement of the word within the composition, and scale. The design was to be restricted to the use of the word, thus no image or picture could be created that would express the meaning of the word.
Design Rationale
The following artistic elements needed to be focused on in order to create a dynamic design: placement of the word on the page, size of type both in relation to the page and in relation to one another, kerning, relationship of the word to the edges of the composition, and typeface characteristics. Exclaim effectively addresses all of these characteristics. I substituted the l with an exclamation point, thus creating the idea of the word without actually illustrating it. I positioned the word in the center of the composition, as there was no reason to locate it elsewhere on the page. I went with a simple font, Arial, as my concept was so strong it didn’t need a fancy font to reinforce the idea. The size of the type lent itself to the eight inch width of the composition. I made it large enough so that exclaim would fit in the composition with roughly a one inch margin of white space between the word and both edges of the piece.
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