Jessica Hische and Louise Fili

First off, I love these two ladies because one of my favorite things in the world in hand made type. Well, type in general, but especially people who can design their own type. That is what first peaked my interest in design is type. Whether it was on some package of some make-up I bought or picking the perfect type face to write a paper in, type has always been a favorite. The Jessica Hische video was really interesting because she has worked in a lot of different fields of design, so she has a perspective that a lot of other people do not get to see. It was great getting to hear about how the different fields differ so much and the pros and cons of each, because as a sophomore in design, I have no clue where I will want to be or what specifically I will want to be designing. The fact that she just kinda bounced around from project to project makes me a little more at ease because I know that I have time to choose what I will want to do after college, and even better is that if what I am doing doesnt interest me after a while, I can just merge into another field. But besides her lecture, Hische does amazing work. I can definitely see the influence that Fili had on Hische through her lettering, but it is also interesting how, even though Hische learned from Fili, she spun what she learned into something that she can now call her own style. Its nice to see two people who have had so much success in lettering, despite now specific of a niche it is.

TFiOS Pinspiration board

Here is the link to my inspiration board on Pintrest for "The Fault in our Stars". http://pinterest.com/jhill9644/book-research/

Chip Kidd and Paul Rand response

Chip Kidd may be one of my favorite people now. The way he spoke and what he had to say was so inspiring to me, and gave me a lot to think about when it comes to book covers, and design in general. He made a good point about how you are designing for many different people, and how you never know where the design is going to go. Take the Jurassic Park logo. That design blew up beyond Kidd's wildest imagination. But he had a responsibility for that, to give that book a voice, and everything there after. I also really like his methods of designing some of his book covers. It wasn't all the same illustrations or styles, but he really thought about what the book was and how he could portray it the best, no matter what the title said. Even though the saying goes "you can't judge a book by its cover" everyone does, and so we have to give every book a good first impression.

The Paul Rand video was very interesting and his style was very different from Kidd's, but it was nice to see that diversity. Rand's book designs were a lot more abstract from Kidd's, but they still got their point across, and still gave readers a reason to pick the book up and want to see what it was about. Through his video, I realized that the reader does not have to understand what the cover has to do with the book at first, all it has to do is spark enough interest that they want to find out what the connection between the story and the cover is.

"Still I Rise" Final Video

This is my final video for my speech project. I used Maya Angelou's speech- "Still I Rise". This was a difficult process for me, because I was not use to working with motion, but I am happy with the end result. 

"Still I Rise" Motion Graphic

Speech Video (so far)

Im a bit slow when it comes to After Effects, so this about half of the speech!

Get Inspired: Motion Graphics

Saul Bass's work on the title sequences for North by Northwest, Psycho and Oceans Eleven set the tone for the whole movie. He uses music that he believes will give the viewer a feel of what is to come. Like in Psycho, where he uses upbeat and suspenseful music, since Psycho is a horror film. His graphics all have their own theme, but once that theme is established, he does not stray far from it. Like in Ocean's Eleven, the whole story is about robbing a casino, so Bass saw it fit to make all the graphics out of the bright lights you see in casinos. The type is the part where you have to be careful. The names of the people who made the movie happen is important, and the whole reason for the title sequence in the first place, so it is important that there is some readability to it. He really did not play much with the text except how it entered and exited the screen, which I thought was a very nice way of handling it. The two title sequences that I thought played off of each other a lot was North by Northwest and Psycho because they both had a grid they followed and it was mostly line work and how the text came into the screen. The Ocean's Eleven sequence strayed a bit because it was more flashy and involved than simple lines. They all fit their movies character though. The moods were suspenseful and eerie, grand and rushed, and sneaky and upbeat. Bass had a pretty minimalistic theme when it came to his title sequences, except for the graphics in Oceans. The music in all of them though, was pretty minimal, just a series of staccato notes played in a pattern.

Mariene McCarty has an interesting style of her own. She uses real life video scenes from the film as her title sequence, in most cases at least. In some cases, like American Psycho, the first minute or so has the red liquid dropping down the screen, but it still goes into the beginning of the movie, while the credits are still running. This is an interesting way to go about it, because it takes a little bit of the focus away from the names, because the viewers are trying to see what is going on in the movie, while also looking at the names. She does a good job about remedying this though, with the placement of the text on the screen where the viewers would most likely be looking, and also having whatever seen she is playing not have a lot of dialog playing at the same time. The music she plays seems to have a lot more instruments involved than Bass's sequences, which makes it a fuller sound, but does not necessarily take away from the impact of the way the music makes us as the viewer feel. The moods very, like I feel disgusted when I see the American Psycho trailer, but the Safe video I feel more melancholy and a little lost. She does a great job of picking opening scenes that portray what the movie will be like, but wont give anything away.

For my own inspiration, I chose Monsters Inc.'s Title Sequence. I absolutely love this opening because the music is upbeat, the words and graphics follow right along with the beat and the transitions are seamless. The graphics in here are so fun and quirky that you can't help but to get excited about this movie. I really like how it jumps around from scene to scene, but it does it in a way that you can follow the entire scene and not wonder how one screen jumped to another. Granted, this is also one of my favorite movies, so that could make me bias to this opening too :)

"Still I Rise" storyboards

I had a tough time with the storyboards, just because I am not to familiar with after effects and what all can be done with it. I like some of my individual ideas, but the reality of me being able to do it will sure be an interesting adventure. Another thing that I will have to think more about is the transitions. I think I made my storyboards more like the book, and I really need to look at how one section will fit together and transition into the next section.

"Still I Rise" refined book

These are a couple of spreads that I revised from a last class. I received a lot of good feedback, mostly about tweaking certain things. So far, I have really enjoyed this project!  

This is the title page of the book. The original page was very big and flashy, and I received the comment that the title page should not give away or take away from the rest of the book. Because the old title page was as flashy as the last and most important page of the book, the title page took away from the last page. I like this composition a lot more because it is simple, but still has the rising effect that I put in all the other spreads that used "still I rise".  

In this spread, the old copy had lines connecting from the last line of text under trod, to the word "dust" on the next page. I decided to take away that line, as well as the one that connected up to the "I Rise" because it did not add any real meaning to composition or any added aesthetic value. I decided to tone down the phrase "and just like dust" on the second page also, because i wanted the emphasis to be one trod and I Rise.  

I also tried to simplify this page. Before, walk was repeated in a gradation, and oil was also repeated to made a bolder , more jagged, oil. I decided to delete the other walks, and just stick with walk being a bit bigger than the rest of the sentence, and then I changed oil into a bolder font, instead of duplicating it a bunch of times. I think this makes a cleaner interpretation of this page.  

This page has given me some troubles, but I think I am close to getting it. The critique I received about this spread was the word "broken" on the top and bottom was unreadable. I switched up the spacing of "broken" and I think it tuned out a lot better. The only thing I am seeing now is where the question mark is broken up, and now there is just two dots on the bottom right side. Not sure if that is to distracting or not.

this page has not changed to much from the last revision, I just deleted the little tear drop illustration and moved the soulful cries sentence down on the right side page to match up with the lowest sentence on the left side. 

again, I have done a couple different takes on this spread, and I think I found something I like. Before this, the HaHaa's took up the entire page. I think it makes it stronger with just the one row of it. Because Angelou did not write in the laughing part, she just laughed in video of it, i though it was appropriate to have it fade into the background, like an afterthought, but still have it big enough that people know it was actually said.

Expressive Typography

This is actually an article that the designer David Carson wrote. As you can see, the whole article, which is on the right side, is in the font called zapf dingbat. The story goes that Carson did not like the article and thought it was boring, so he livened it up with the all symbol font. The technique used in this page reflects the content in Carson breaking all the rules and making, what he thought to be, an improvement to the article. I like how  rebellious Carson is, and how he started an almost revolution on how type doesn't have to legible to communicate an idea. 

 These images are from an article by designrshub.com named "25 smart examples of typography in logo design" (very original title if you ask me) but they do have a bunch of pretty creative examples of expressive typography. They are just generic logos, but you can obviously tell which companies would want each. The timewatch logo is a very simple black and white logo, with the "i" in "time" being replaced by a colon. The word time is made to look like a stop watch or a digital watch. The "typeface" logo is pretty funny to me, because it literally a face that is made out of letters/type. Again, it is a very simple, and clever way to convey a specific message. 

This letterpress composition was made by the designer Jono Lewarne. He was trying his hand at letterpress and wanted to get into contact with Jack Stauffacher, a designer famous for his letterpresses. Lewarne used letterpress for this letter, because as he says in his blog, "if you're going to write to a letterpress guru to ask a favour, you sort of have to letterpress your letter".  I am attracted to this work, one-because I love the look of letterpress, and ironically, all the mistakes and imperfections that come with it, and two- how he addresses the word "funny" in this letter. It is not perfectly lined up, so it looks funny.

"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou Research

I will be using the stanzas from the 42s marker, til the 1m50s marker

-Who is speaking?- Maya Angelou

-Why was/is the speech important to society?- "Still I Rise" was used for a campaign for the United Negro College Fund. It is "a poem about the survival of black women despite every kind of humiliation, deploys most of these forces, as it celebrates black women while simultaneously challenging the stereotypes to which America has subjected them since the days of slavery." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_Still_I_Rise) Now a days, I see this poem as an inspirational poem for anyone who has been knocked down, and need to be reminded to rise up to the challenges of the day, because so many people before you have come back from much worse. 

-Why do you feel it is important or interesting?- I think it is always important to revisit the past, and to be grateful for how far we have come, but also to remind ourselves of what had to happen to get here. History is such an important learning tool for the future, and even though a lot of it repeats itself, some of the events, such as slavery, should never be revisited. It is interesting because of the way it was written and the sassiness surrounding it, and most importantly, the voice of Maya Angelou, who lived in the aftermath of slavery, and the truth she can put behind her own words. 

-What is the emotion, mood, tone, personality, feeling of the speech?- This poem has so many emotions rolled up into it. It is sassy and confident, full of pride and bitterness. It is a woman addressing the people that have tried to put her down, and telling them that it will not work, that she is stronger than they think. 

-What is intonation, emphasis, what is loud, stressed, or soft. Where are there pauses?- Maya Angelou does a wonderful job of speaking, and when listening to her, you know that every word she says has been thought out, the emphasis are there for a reason, and even the pauses have special meanings. In the first stanza, she uses emphasis on words like history, which is at the end of the first line, bitter twisted lies, which is at the end of the second line, and I Rise, which is the end of the first stanza. Angelou paused before she said I Rise, which put an extra emphasis on it. This pattern continues on through out the poem. She always puts the most emphasis on the phrase "I Rise" or "Still I Rise", because of the dramatic pause, and the loudness in her voice. 

-What do you feel should be loud or soft, long pause or rushed?- I think some of the describing words she use should be the loudest, and slowest to pronounce. Where as some of the phrases she use, like "bitter twisted lies", and "waken by my soulful cries", should be said a bit more rapidly, because they already just roll of the tongue when you say them. 

-Is there a call to action? When listening to it what are key/emphasized words?- There really is not a call to action, at least in the set of stanzas I am focusing on. It is more about a person telling another person about what they are already doing. Some key emphasized words are in order of when she speaks them- write, history, bitter, lies, trod, very dirt, but, dust, I Rise. Does, sassiness, upset, why, beset, gloom, walk, oil wells, pumping, suns, moons, certainty, tides, hope, still I rise. Want, broken, bowed, lowered, down, tear, weakened, soulful cries. sassiness upset, just 'cause I laugh, gold mines digging, shoot, words, cut, lies, kill, hatefulness, life, I Rise. 

-How does it make you feel?- I think this is a very powerful poem, and personally it gives me motivation to push through whatever I am struggling with, and to eventually rise above it.

-How do you imagine that the audience felt?- I feel like it depends on when they heard it, what kind of problems they were facing at the time. The imagery in this is very powerful, and if people listened or read this around the time she wrote it, they were probably seeing very real images about the white people that had treated them like dirt. 

-Could there be another interpretation of the speech?- I am sure you could skew her words and make a different interpretation, or maybe even focus on the negative symbolism of this poem and think it has a sad tone, but in my opinion, I think it has a pretty concrete meaning. 

-Write/find a short bio of the person giving the speech- Dr. Maya Angelou is one of the most renowned and influential voices of our time. Hailed as a global renaissance woman, Dr. Angelou is a celebrated poet, memoirist, novelist, educator, dramatist, producer, actress, historian, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Dr. Angelou has served on two presidential committees, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Arts in 2000, the Lincoln Medal in 2008, and has received 3 Grammy Awards. President Clinton requested that she compose a poem to read at his inauguration in 1993. Dr. Angelou's reading of her poem "On the Pulse of the Morning" was broadcast live around the world. Dr. Angelou has received over 30 honorary degrees and is Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University