reflection - Typographic Design Lab 3 / FALL 2014

Robert Gestewitz
12/8/2014
Typographic Design Lab 3
In Typographic Design Lab 3, I worked with
animating typography and found it overall to be a very fun
and interesting class. The first project was a very basic
animation in which I explored a variety of different ways to
animated the letter M, narrowing it down to 3 possible
animations. After experimenting with all three, I chose
animate my M by destroying it with a blender, believing this
would be the most visually interesting. For my first
explorations, unsure what materials to use, I cut out a paper
letter M and turned on the blender, recording it with my
video camera. Through further experimentation, I settled
with the letter M being made out of a pineapple, blending it
in fruit juice. I then bent the M into a loop, so that the GIF
was more fluid, and changed the colors using curves in
Photoshop. For my second project I had to make an
animated book cover and chose Clockwork Orange as my
book. To figure out which direction I wanted to go, I
thought about the book, hoping to create graphic visuals that
would signify the book’s theme, without relying on the
already established aesthetics of the original book and movie.
I then created 25 sketches of the end screen on the
computer, using different typefaces, finally selecting the one
which I felt best captured the book. I proceeded to
conceptualize the entire book, and sketched some
possibilities. I used after effects to create a sense of unease,
and referencing the book while maintaining mysteriousness.
For my last project I had to create an animated speech, which
was a much longer illustration than the previous projects. I
used “We all Should Be Feminists” by Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie, This is a speech that I felt passionate about, and I
thought would work well with kinetic typography. I started
by looking at typefaces, and colors, then sketched some ideas
on paper. What I found difficult witchimamanda ngozi
adichieh this project when choosing fonts and colors, was
finding something that was neither feminine nor masculine,
considering that the subject matter was about feminism, I did
not want to make aesthetic choices that reinforced gender
roles, which would be contradictory to the messages of
Adiche’s speech. I ended with choosing Bodoni, gray and red
with a black textured background. I wanted the aesthetic to
be bold to match the content of the speech. I delved more
into after effects, and used it to make appearing and