TYPOGRAPHY / Task 3 (B) : Type Design & Communication

5.11.2021 - 19.11.2021 (Week 11 - Week 13)
Esther Vanessa/0350751/Bachelors of Design (Hon.) in Creative Media
Typography
Task 3 (A) / Type Design & Communication

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JUMP LINK

• Task
• Final Submission

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LECTURE 

Lecture 1-4 completed in Task 1

Lecture 5-6 completed in Task 2

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INSTRUCTIONS

TASK

Typographic Stickers! That's what we're supposed to create for our final project. It should be animated too. So the first thing I did, I went on a hunt.

Figure 1.1 Animated typography (n.d)

Figure 1.2 Animated Typography (n.d)

Figure 1.3 Animated Typography (n.d)

These typography GIFs are actually really cute and interesting. They are simple and the animation (as also asked by Sir Vinod) to be minimal. I also tried to look around for valentine stickers to have more reference I can be more inspired and have an idea to work with. Valentine stickers with the actual saying of "Happy Valentine's Day" are actually.. not that great, or at least that's what I get from scrolling for quite some time in Pinterest. So I took some examples stickers around the theme love.

Figure 1.4 Love Sticker (n.d)

Figure 1.5 Love Sticker (n.d)

Figure 1.6 Love Sticker (n.d)

With these research, I went ahead and tried to sketch on my iPad. 

Figure 1.7 Sketches (3/11/2021)

Afterwards, I tried to digitalize two of them.

Figure 1.8 First Digitalization (4/11/2021)

Figure 1.9 Second Digitalization (4/11/2021)

During feedback session, Sir Vinod agrees that the envelope idea is pretty solid, therefore I should try and explore more from there. Based on the feedback, I'll change the composition and try to create the final black & white version of the sticker.

Figure 1.10 Final Digitalization before exporting to telegram (05/11/2021)

I used the telegram sticker bot and export the sticker to telegram. I screen-grabbed the chat after sending it to my friend. 

Figure 1.11 Screen Grab (05/11/2021)

Subsequently, I tried to find the right color palette for the sticker. The website I'm using is Colorhunt. Alongside I also used color adobe website to look for necessary complementary colors. 

I came up with a few color palettes to choose from,

Figure 1.12 A selection of color palette I chose (11/11/2021)

The reason I chose a rather pastel color is to match the theme of the sticker, which is both cute and laidback. 

After Feedback

After Feedback session on Week 12, Sir Vinod demonstrated a couple of notes to improve my sticker which are the followings, 

• Added more to the notelike feel by adding lines to the 'note'
• Changed the typography to ITC Garamond but making the font bigger to fill up the negative space. Removed the scribbles and illustration (it no longer fits). Color scheme is already great. 

While continuing on the work of the stickers, I've encountered several problems. The problems are as followed,

• My stickers aren't well centered, in which I had to fix the anchor points and elements of the sticker 
• I fixed the outlines so it'll fit well 
• In the beginning I had problems when exporting the B&W, the bot doesn't seem to recognize the size of the sticker when it is clear it's 512x512 px, had to turn around and save it for web. 

Figure 1.13 New clean file with both the Colored and B&W (12/11/2021)

Continued with making the outlines for the colored version.

Figure 1.13 Fixing the overall sticker (12/11/2021)

Figure 1.14 Creating the outlines (12/11/2021)

Figure 1.15 Outlines for the final sticker (12/11/2021)

I did the same thing to the black and white version. 

Afterwards, I continued with making the GIF animation for the sticker. Sir Vinod did gave us a notice that it's alright if there are mistakes as this is a first trial for the class and mistakes are bound to happen.

I used After Effects to animate the sticker. My plan is to create an animation of the letter opening and the note will come up; simple animation. 

Breaking down the animating process, it is pretty simple. First I had to use null to scale all the elements to the right size. Afterwards I use the position tool to animate the note pulling up. To animate the opening of the mail, I used the scale tool to animate so. 

Figure 1.16 Progress in After Effects (14/11/2021)

Figure 1.17 Progress in After Effects (14/11/2021)

There's no particularly tricky part when working on the animation apart from setting the anchor point of the top part of the mail has to be moved to the middle. I had some help from tutorials on YouTube and a friend. It is important to note that when working in After Effects you need to separate all the layers that you want to animate, then importing them as composition. 

Without further ado, here's the final result. 

Final Result

Figure 1.18 Final Submission Colored (17/11/2021)

Figure 1.19 Final Submission B&W (17/11/2021)

Figure 1.20 Final Submission PDF (17/11/2021)

Figure 1.21 Final Submission GIF (17/11/2021)

Figure 1.22 Final Submission Screengrab (17/11/2021)

To download the sticker pack, click here.

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FEEDBACK

Week 11

General Feedback: Make sure to utilize all the space given in 512x512 px because it's going to be small. Graphical elements should not be the main focus, keep it around 15% and the rest is the typography.

Specific Feedback: The Envelope concept is good therefore should try to explore more from it; play with the composition by scaling the envelope to be bigger so the writing can be the center of attention.

Week 12 

General Feedback: Typography should be the main attention. Taylor's logo should not be distorted in any way

Specific Feedback: Pay attention to the negative and positive space of the sticker. Ensure there's emphasis in the typography. Remove the outline for the letter.

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REFLECTION

Experience

It has been a long series of a semester. Working with Illustrator and producing ideas now seems very fluid. While working on this project, I had to go through some serious stuff in real life, so maybe that affected a bit on my work this time, but otherwise I'm still pretty satisfied with my work (would definitely use it to send it to my friends). It is also fun that I could actually create a cute electronic sticker that I can send on social media, I might try this again for fun the next time I have some spare time. Making a gif out of it can be pretty frustrating especially for first timers, but I have a friend and YouTube on my side so that part was not as hard as I imagined it to be. 

Observations

I observed that typography can be explored in such a fun way that would attract non-designers to utilize it in different ways. It is also harder to create a black and white design in the first place, because as for me I always picture things usually with color in my head, so this is pretty challenging at first. Moving on from the black and white to colored also need a lot of consideration. 

Findings

I found out that stickers that only consist of words/typography it could be so attractive and fun to look at. I also found out that sticker size is extremely small so there's really not much space to work with, makes it extra challenging for designers. 

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FURTHER READING

When type goes tiny: How brands can deliver legible text at small sizes

Figure 3.1 small text in smart watch (n.d)

With technology progressing rapidly, designers gain more and more platform that they can express their creativity on. This includes small spaces and minimal negative space. This creates problem with typography because these known typefaces are not created to fit into such small spaces as kerning becomes very important in this, yet very time consuming. To tackle this, designers create tiny type, design mainly to focus on small size work. 

Small sizes text means less eligibility and readability to viewers; they look invisible. To battle this, micro typefaces are created to maintain readability all across small spaces such as on tiny screens in smart watches and on the back label of a medicine bottle. These micro types includes widely opening up the spacing and dramatically changing the shape of the letters.