EVALUATION

EVALUATION

 

My intentions for this project were to show how digital media can enrich the possibilities of experimentation and also how sometimes digital media can be more favourable over traditional techniques. Like the brief required, I was to create a final piece, an image constructed purely out of words and with the help of my experiments and research, show how digital typography/media really helps when experimenting and how it gives you much more flexibility than traditional media and techniques would. My plan for my final print was to create an image out of typography which also has strong contextual information behind it that also has a presentable and interesting aspect to the eye of the viewer and I believe I successfully did that as my final piece has good aesthetics and the contextual information is really clear as the words and the shape they create link together perfectly.

 

One of the three artists I researched is Mary Kate McDevitt, and most of her work is based on traditional media and techniques, but the thing that influenced me from her work is the aspect of it and the messy spontaneous aesthetics in the colors she uses. Another one of the artist that I investigated on is Craig Ward, and his work is more digital based involving different Photo shopped fonts and effects. From this research I attempted to combine both of their styles where my work will be made through the use of digital media and add Mary’s traditional look to some elements in the image. The 3^rd artist I researched is Jamie Reid, and what I picked up from this research is the ability to show contextual information in my work as this aspect stands out mostly to me from his artwork.

 

Throughout this project, from beginning to the end, I perfected my skills in Photoshop and use of digital media and I also learned new techniques and ways to manipulate my work, which really helped me make my final piece as effective and impressive as I could. The knowledge that allowed me to complete this project was provided to me by my teacher and also a big part of it from my research which really influenced my work.

 

One thing about my final piece that I feel I succeeded in is the contextual information behind the design and how the text and the image it creates really go hand in hand to make the viewer think more about this piece and about the artists intentions. If I were to go back and work some more on this project, I would have wanted to make 2 or 3 more final pieces in this style so I had a greater range to choose from as my final piece, and that would have shown the process of thought and how I experimented with digital media all the way until the end of the project.

 

Overall I am happy with the final outcome of my typography project, and I believe that my final piece is effective and has a great impact on the viewer as the contextual information and the techniques and tools used go really well hand in hand to create the final piece presented in this blog.

 

 

Printscreens: Final Piece

Print screens

 

Here I will show you the steps I went through when I created my final piece for this project. Here you will get an in depth description of the techniques and tools I used when I created my final typography piece.

 

The first step is to open a new page on Photoshop and make sure that the background is blank. You will need to create your set text brush so you can apply the text as a brush. Use the text tool (T) from the tool bar and type the text you want. You are able to change the font, size and color of your text so get creative.

You will create your text brush by using the rectangular marquee tool from your tool bar, and on an empty background, select the area of the text you want to make into a brush. After you selected it, go to edit in the top bar, click define brush preset, re-name your text and ‘’voilà’’, you created your first text brush. You can use the same technique to make as many brushes as you’d like to.

Now that you have successfully created your new text brush, click on the brush tool as shown in the image and you are ready to start experimenting.  Like shown in the image below, click the button circled with the red outline and the panel showed on the right hand side like in the image should open. This panel will allow you to customize your brush, by allowing you to rotate the brush, the trail behind your brush, the roundness of your brush, size, spacing, hardness etc. This was my favourite part as I had the ability to manipulate my brush and give me the flexibility needed to make this piece. Feel free to experiment with all the fetures thtat the brush tool gives you and your work will be much more effective .



The next step I went through, was to select an image that I was going to work on, decrease the opacity of the image so it’s easier for me to work on it, use the pen tool to outline the section of the image I was going to work on (right click inside the outline and click make selection to select area) and have my text brush ready to start applying the text. Make sure that all the text applied is on a new layer and not on the image itself. I also made a layer which is the background and filled it with the color I wanted my final piece to be presented on.

Now that you have your area selected, use the brush tool to apply the text. It would be helpful to keep a smaller copy of the image to the side so when you apply the text, you can use that image to sample the colors for separate sections of the image to give it a more realistic look. You can take a sample of a color by holding alt key while using the brush tool and clicking the color form the copy of the image. Remember to use the brush settings from the panel presented before to suit your image if it’s tilted, of if you have any other specific need for your image.

In the next 4 steps I will show you how I created the blood drop from the word kill in my piece. First start by using the text tool from the tool bar to write your text in the color and font desired. I used red because it has to mimic blood and I chose a bigger and bolder font so it’s easier to read the text after a warp it in the next step.

The next thing I did was that I brought an image of a water drop as a template for the blood dripping of my final piece. Press ctrl + T to resize and rotate your image and lay it on top of the water drop and another thing you could do is decrease the opacity of the water drop so you can see your text better when warping. The most essential step is that you rasterize your text, and you do this by right clicking on the text in your layer panel and click on ‘’Rasterize Type’’ button, and this will make your text into an image so now you can manipulate it.

Now that you have rasterized your text layer, you will have to select the layer and click ‘’edit’’ in the task bar at the top, click ‘’transform path’’ and the click ‘’warp’’. By doing this a grid should appear on top of your image just like in the print screen presented that will allow you to warp the text into the desired shape.  You can youse the square anchor point to place them on the edge of the image and use the handles extending from the anchor points to change the shape of your image.

The final step I went through was to add some effects to my background, and for this I used copyright free images from the internet and overlaid them on top of the background and decreased opacity so it blended. You could achieve the same background effects by downloading some brushes from the internet to give more depth to your image and make it more impressive.

 

 

 

 

These are all the techniques and tools I used to create my final piece. I used the same ‘’selection and painting in the selected area’’ technique for the blade of the knife and the blood stains on the blade I made them by free hand to give it that messy and spontaneous look. The techniques I used were quiet basic, but used in the right may I believe I managed to create an effective piece that will have a significant impact on the viewer.

Final Piece

 -Final Piece-

I chose this as my final piece because I believe that the techniques and tools used are very effective and it shows how digital media can enrich the possibilities of experimentation. My main hero image is the knife in the centre that has been created out of pure text by using a text brush.

 In the background I used a copyright free image to give my piece a lot more depth, and I managed this by placing the image behind all layers and decreasing opacity. I also considered the contextual information behind my design and the process of thought is successfully illustrated in this piece.

The concept behind this typography design is about how words can be as harmful as a knife, and the assimilation between the two is really effective. If I were to go back and change some aspects about this it would have to simply be experimenting with different fonts, colors and try out different ways/objects to create out of text. I also think that my final piece reflects some of Mary Kate McDevitt’s work but more digitized, as her work is mostly based on traditional media.

Overall, I am happy with the final outcome of this piece and I believe that this is a presentable final piece that met the requirements on the brief.