The first weeks of Advanced Typography have taken us back to very elemental exercises of form and design. Our teacher has been drawing from the exercises proposed in Ellen Lupton’s book Graphic Design: The New Basics. Here are the first week’s explorations.
Create compositions using a single letters, creating an interesting balance between positive and negative space.
Take two contrasting letterforms and repeat, reflect, rotate them into an interesting composition.
For the next exercise, we cut 1/2 inch squares right through a magazine, so that interesting random compositions will result. Then we put our selected clippings together into accordion books.
I was using a home and cooking magazine, so my findings seemed to evoke messages about food and its perils. I went with the swatches just as they were, enjoying story but neglecting design… so this exercise turned out to be compositionally uninteresting. Oops.
Finally, I made this little contraption to interpret the intangible word “anonymous.” The word can only be read at a certain angle.
