Reflective Essay Type

Working with type face can be difficult, it feels a little limiting with your creativity so i wanted to try and make visually striking images with the type integrated somehow into something other than just one letter. I have found after this that it didn't limit my creativity at all it actually challenged it and made for some really cool images.

I experimented with several different types and used a different typeface for each project.  The challenge in that for me is that I am working with Photoshop 7, and it doesn't show you the actual look of the font as you are going through them to find one that you like, the advantage is that i have a font package with it and many options to choose from.  One thing i find with type face is that it is also easy to forget what you were working with so reminders are necessary sometimes so you don't have to go back through hundreds of them to find what you liked.  I looked for ones specifically that made me think of other forms or figures to utilize them for the way i wanted to approach this project.

I did not choose the letters randomly.  They are my own personal initials and the first initials of my kids.  I thought about sticking to specific interests they might have involving their letters personally, but since my oldest child and I have the same first initial that didn't quite work the way i wanted it to.  Instead i stuck to my original plan of finding type face and fonts that sparked my imagination for creative images to work on and challenge myself with.

I rasterize in several of my projects, especially the B project so that i could apply the filters i wanted to get a specific effect on them.  It was necessary, in the B project specifically, to get the fabric feel to the entire project i was looking for.  The idea was to give it a feel as if to be on a quilt or a child's bed spread and i had to rasterize the fonts to do so.

My personal favorite is the J. J is my sons first initial and i actually struggled with how i was going to work with it for awhile.  After finding that specific type face it reminded me of the tail of a monkey or other animal and then it became a flat colored version of our cat.  As the rest of it came together it was simple, fun and i enjoy seeing it in several different sizes.  It is hard to pick a favorite because i enjoyed all of them, but visually the J project is my favorite.  I would like to add that sometimes if you want to really get a feel for what you like best, the thing to do is walk away and come back to it later, that allowed me to pick a favorite for this assignment.