The brief is to design a publication using photographs of A-Z taken in a specific area over the summer break. As I was going on holiday to the Orkney islands of northern Scotland for me this would be the most appropriate place to collect my images. The nature of the brief suggests the context of the images will be the overriding theme as a consequence this should dictate the overall style, aesthetic and production of the publication.
Before the trip I had no real prior knowledge of the Orkneys I only knew it was above Scotland and that it was gonna be 15ºc in the middle of July! Of course now I know it has a lot more to offer. Orkney islands have recorded settlements dating back 10,000 years and is home to the oldest settlement in Scotland, 'Skara Brae' that is older than both Stonehedge and the Great Pyramids!
My initial thoughts on the project would be to try and find type forms in the landscape anywhere I could. In concept this seemed simple enough I felt I would have been able to find natural letter forms anywhere and everywhere but I soon found it was going to be much more difficult. The island is mainly farmland with footpaths and archeological sites dotted around due to this the letters really did take a lot of searching. Just on our first walk around we were confronted with massive cliff faces and rare birds, and a lot of cows.
Initially this concept came loosely from a piece of work I had seen by Stefan Sagmiester and his use of extraordinary typography using a number of weird and innovative objects. I found the book again and discovered its titled, ' Things I have Learnt' by Stefan Sagmeister. The images bellow show the pages from this book. The idea being that Sagmeister uses both interesting and everyday objects and transforms them into extravagent letterforms tho the materials used do not change.
Sagmeister's concept for these images plays on the idea of taking normal everyday objects and changing the context. By composing the objects himself into different letterforms he brings the extraordinary to life. My original idea for my letterforms was inline with this bit different, I wanted to see if I could find singular letterforms not words that have not be composed or made by anyone with any intention but simply by chance. The Sagmeister images have a clear overriding message that informs the composition, design and layout. My images are a slightly more simplistic and the message each photo displays speaks about that letter form and that letter form alone. When I first saw these images I found them a big inspiration and it wasn't till this project arose that I could have a go at creating or finding my own.
During my two week trip I spent almost all the time when walking and in the car keeping a keen eye on the landscape trying to see what I could find and constantly coming up with different and creative ways I could possibly display a letter form. I did really struggle at times trying to get some of the letters and it was interesting to see what letters occurred less naturally. There were obvious letters early on that I knew would be tricky the 'G' and 'Q' for example are very unusual shapes on the other hand things like 'O' and 'I' were much more common but this arose a new challenge of making sure this is the best 'I' or 'O' I could find. I will go on to explain each letter form individually and where I found it and why I chose it in another post. The photographs will be the defining part of this work and identifying what is the most appropriate of displaying these images is key to this brief.
Overall collecting these images I found it much harder than I originally felt it would be the number of natural letter forms that are really distinct and clear is very low. I soon got into the flow of looking for letters and more and more accustomed to the shapes of the letterform and what it was that really defined them. This challenge then became part of the solution I found that objects on the side of the road or the beach would present themselves as letterforms.
No comments:
Post a Comment