Extra Light to Extra bold and everything in between.
Module 4- Typography for digital media- Week 4- M.Des. XR design, IIT J.
Day 0
“Typography ? super excited but also I think I can manage this module pretty well”, were my initial thoughts before the module until Abhijith KR (Keyaar), Studio K11 showed up at our studio.
Day 1
We started with the Gestalt principles for Typography. In just a few moments I went from “Oh I know this to Ohhh my ???” And slowly at the end of the lecture, it was more like “I barely know typography anymore”. Pulling enough courage for the warm-up tasks, I sat down with a piece of paper, and BOOM, Keyaar puts a “You haven’t even seen half of it” on to my face. But I really did keep going though (Pat on my back).
Ex-101,102,103-Calligraphy Basics
These exercises were basically to help us get our text proportions right and fine. And also to explore text manipulation to arrive at new typefaces that might suit the needs of the moment in our designs. I had a lot of fun practicing and exploring calligraphy. I really loved the structure of the exercises. First, we explored the basics, tested them, applied and improvised on them.
If I were to plot Day 1 to a graph it would look something like this:
Day 2
Exercise-104
The Brief for 104 was simple: As a group, attempt classifying the supplied type samples. Name the categories. Figure out different ways to classify, as appropriate.
This Exercise started to be really fun, we had all the creative say as to why we grouped the set of typefaces together. And I found a few of my batch mates doing a great job with their attention to different details that I was failing to notice. This did give me a great perspective shift on noticing things more deeply and in different ways.
Exercise 105 - Sitting is a verb
This exercise was really interesting as a whole. We pick two chairs from a given catalog and match them with typefaces that we feel resonate with the feel, look, proportions, weights, etc. of the chosen chair. It got a lot more interesting as I started working on it.
My take on the Exercise
Exercise 106 - YourName
We had to typeset our name and a short bio in our mother script for our mobile phones. Was a challenging exercise because finding a typeface that had all the weights right in the native script was really hard.
Day 2 graph
Every day I had a massive learning curve with Keyaar’s teaching. Though it was a bit overwhelming, they were all necessary for a designer.
Day 3,4
Exercise 107- Resume in chains
The one exercise with a wonderful amount of constraints.
”Using one type size and color, typeset your Resume”, “Pay attention to the white space play”, and” Follow a grid system”.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from this would be that “Even the tiniest things matter” and how to give “Attention to details, word by word”.
Keyaar went through each and every word of our resumes and pointed out even the slightest of mistakes. Which was really helpful and insightful. The efforts he put into each and every exercise and on the whole module were really spellbound.
For example:
He went through all of our assignments, marked suggestions, and mistakes, and left remarks as to how to correct them.
My take on the Exercise
Day 3+4 graph
I was really trying to build my confidence in the subject by working my way of learning.
Day 5
Exercise 108-Thing explainer
The one-page webpage for anything that we would like to explain more simply and effectively as possible, more like a narrative. I followed an elaborate process, right from ideation to wireframing to typeface selection to layouts. I did have a flow state that I thoroughly enjoyed.
For anybody who would like to take a look at my assignment here is a Figma
Prototype link: Click here
Day 5 graph
Lessons learned
To be more mindful of giving attention to the smallest of the details.
Typography is more than what I thought it really was.
I need to get my basics right, not immediately but gradually and consistently.
What Now?
Though my confidence in the subject is still low, I will try to balance it by doing some actual learning and experimenting. A week filled with a lot of realizations and amazement and I am not going to let go of the fire.
Oh About the fallen confidence levels :p
It really did pave the way for me to pick up on a lot of valuable lessons from a guru like Keyaar and I am still working on this. The impact that he had left on me is really phenomenal, that someday I will try to be half the guru he is today. And I am going to carry this with me forever.
Thank you Keyaar. You mean a lot to the entire batch.
Regards,
Varsha Anand