Alphabet Soup: Part One

On Monday 28th September the class was given a new brief entitled 'Alphabet Soup'. Each person was given a word to visually communicate, mine was: 'Dissect'. I found myself stumped as to what to do with this word, so I decided to brainstorm a few ideas and just try to come up with something interesting. I started by looking at the actual definition found in the dictionary and found this:

Dissect:
1. To cut apart or separate
2. To examine, analyse or criticise in minute detail

I decided to follow the first definition and literally pull apart my letters. Once this idea had come to the forefront of my mind I instinctively thought of the traditional Channel 4 ident. The idea that the number 4 had been split up and pulled slightly apart, making it appear disjointed really appealed to me and addressed the brief perfectly. I then started to look at different type faces, exploring many different ones but eventually landing on Arial Black. The boldness of it was perfect and when using upper case letters the thickness of all the lines was ideal for 'dissecting' them in half.

I could not decide which 10 letters to use for this project so I used a 'randomiser' similar to the one used to assign the word 'dissect' to me in the first place. The 10 letters I picked were: A,E,H,X,N,V,Y,L,K,Z. With my final 10 letters I decided to trace each one and then work over the top with experimentation. I split each line in two and then also added serifs in certain places. Once my final typefaces had been designed I printed them off and used a scalpel to create 'stencils'. With these stencils I experimented with different materials including felt and foamboard.

I scanned all different letters into my computer with all different colours of felt.

I liked the solid colour approach but I also liked the idea of combining a few different colours. So I decided upon using the primary colours red, yellow and blue. Once I had designed all ten letters using my primary colour format I could have finished the project then and there. However I decided to take the design one step further. I remembered that I liked the 3D approach of the Channel 4 ident and so used photoshop to distort the perspective of my designs. Each one was given a slant so I could put another layer behind, this one would be black to communicate the 3D design.

Below are a few examples of my final design: