Monday 28 February 2011

What is graphic design for?

Barnbrook studio has made a collection of short animated films based around some newly designed fonts. They really capture the essence and feeling of the type using a mixture of images, effects and music. These short videos give you a feel for the new typefaces and make them have more personality. In a way they are selling the fonts using sound and effects based on their characteristics, showing the viewer what kind of tone they set.
Elegy, a complete typeface made by Jim Wasco based on the logo drawn by Ed Benguiat for
Upper & lowercase magazine.
Klint, a strong sans serif font with subtle humanist touches.

What is graphic design for?

Orange has taken people's tweets about love on Twitter and made short animations for Valentine's day. This is obviously aimed at couples or people wanting to woo someone on Valentine's day, which is really cute and quirky.
I think this is great because it makes it really personal to the viewer and makes them feel involved, it plays on peoples sentimental side and used what was happening at the time to keep it current. It also promotes Twitter, I'm guessing the idea is to get people to log on to Twitter via their Orange mobile.











Opposites and text...



Richard Hart

Design is about doing... Submission guidelines


Palindromes

A palindrome is a word, phrase, number or other sequence of units that can be read the same way in either direction. Composing literature in palindromes is an example of constrained writing. The word "palindrome" was coined from Greek roots palin (πάλιν; "again") anddromos (δρóμος; "way, direction") by English writer Ben Jonson in the 17th century. The actual Greek phrase to describe the phenomenon is karkinikê epigrafê (καρκινικὴ επιγραφήcrab inscription), or simply karkinoi (καρκίνοι; crabs), alluding to the backward movement of crabs, like an inscription that can be read backwards.

Ambigrams have also been called 'vertical palindromes'

The most familiar palindromes, in English at least, are character-by-character: The written characters read the same backwards as forwards. Some examples of common palindromic words: civicradarlevelrotorkayakreviverracecar, and redder.

The longest palindromic word in the Oxford English Dictionary is the onomatopoeic tattarrattat for a knock on the door.

A few examples of palindromes that seem to make the most sense...

deleveled
evitative
redivider
releveler
rotavator
deified
peeweep- a type of bird, often understood to be a lapwing
racecar
repaper
reviver
rotator
redder
tut-tut
civic
dewed
kayak
level
radar
refer
rotor
sexes
solos
stats
deed
noon
peep
did
dad
mum 
nan
eye 
gig
gag
wow



Semordnilaps

Semordnilap is a name coined for a word or phrase that spells a different word or phrase backwards. "Semordnilap" is itself "palindromes" spelled backwards.

stressed / desserts
rewarder / redrawer
departer / retraped
reporter / retroper
was / saw
gateman / nametag
deliver / reviled
straw / warts
star / rats
lived / devil
smart / trams
spit / tips
stop / pots

Ambigrams

An ambigram is a typographical design or artform that may be read as one or more words not only in its form as presented, but also from another viewpoint, direction, or orientation. The words readable in the other viewpoint, direction or orientation may be the same or different from the original words. Douglas R. Hofstadter describes an ambigram as a "calligraphic design that manages to squeeze two different readings into the selfsame set of curves." Different ambigram artists (sometimes called ambigramists) may create completely different ambigrams from the same word or words, differing in both style and form.

Ambigrams are exercises in graphic design that play with optical illusionssymmetry and visual perception. Some ambigrams feature a relationship between their form and their content. Ambigrams usually fall into one of several categories:

Rotational Through rotation, normally 180 degrees but sometimes 45 or 90. They can also form different words from the original, e.g. up and dn (abbreviation for down) or swoop and dooms.
Mirror-image...or glass door ambigrams, because they can be read from either side.
Figure-ground A design in which the spaces between the letters of one word form another word.


Spinonym An ambigram in which all the letters are made of the same glyph, possibly rotated and/or inverted. WEB is an example of a word that can easily be made into a spinonym. Previously called rotoglyphs or rotaglyphs.











Friday 11 February 2011

Design for screen

Ana Somnia
Another brilliant example of screen based design that allows the viewer to directly interact with it. Before starting the animation you are prompted to turn your webcam on and turn on all the lights. A room then appears with a little girl in bed asking for you turn the light out... which you do in your own room, the webcam responds to this and the lights go out on screen. Then what follows is a series of lovely illustrations growing from each other, which appear to be the little girls dreams. These illustrations continue until you turn on the light and are greeted with an image of the little girl being woken up and rubbing her eyes. 
I think this is brilliant, it breaks the normal conventions of other interactive screen based designs. It thinks outside the box, and something as simple as turning your own light on and off certainly adds to the atmosphere of the animation.



Design for screen

99 Rooms
This is a brilliant example of design for screen that allows the viewer to interact with it directly. It consists of 99 images, or 'rooms' set in an abandoned warehouse covered in graffiti. You go through these 99 rooms interacting with certain aspects of the picture, such as clicking on a bug to send it running across the room, or as shown in the above two pictures clicking on existing graffiti to extend it across the rest of the wall.

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Design for screen




These images are captured from a series of point and click games called Submachine. The simple imagery and animations that allow you to interact with objects in the individual rooms are enticing and make the puzzling game extremely addictive. This has been one of my favourite screen based games for a long time, both because of how it looks visually and also because of the simple point and click actions that allow you to directly interact with the game.