Interim Crit 1 - Studio Brief 2

HEALTHY

my theme for this brief is healthy, i felt this was a complicated idea as it means many different things to different people. Health is relative to the subject, it might be mentally healthy, physically healthy, dieting or natural. This gave me a few different way i can go with my type face, looking at mental healthy and physically well being were my preferred but i have to be careful not to impact any negative ideas or give the wrong idea off. i don't want to make healthy seem too skinny or too large because of the negative connotations.
- anorexia issues ( too thin)
- mental health ( seen as offensive )
- offend people who don't see it as healthy for them

IDEAS

after already looking at many different typefaces used in the same way as my type will be i'm going to look for different forms, shapes and ideas to inspire my designs. I'm going to ask my peers what they think of first when they here 'healthy', i want the first idea not matter how strange or unrelated but i need to really connotations of the word how it makes people think and feel. Engaging with my audience at this stage will give me informed design designs and ways to research more, it gives me a wide knowledge of the way people think about my theme.

"what do you first associate with the word 'heathy'?"
green
salad
diet
rounded shapes
green vegetables
clean eating
clean living
fruit
natural
shapely
strong
mental stability
enough
free
clean
skinny
light
positive
growth
lifestyle
good physical health
good mental health
balanced

From this research i can see that the main association with the idea of healthy is related to lifestyles and diet, clean eating and living. This gives me a clear path to go down as now i can work with natural forms seen in foods that are healthy, veg ect, i can be inspired by the shapes and styles of these to create a typeface that is a clear reflection of what the general public think healthy is.
There was only one mention of mental health which shocked me as this is one of the main things i'd relate to the topic, i feel this may just be mine and a few other thought because of this i will look into it in less detail, maybe just look at the forms of healthy brain waves or the chemical compounds for
inspiration. Mainly focusing on the main ideas of healthy rather than the few.


SYMONYMS + ANTONYMS

Again these support the idea of natural forms, inspiration from nature. But unlike my primary research of these are more focused around the ideas of strength and boldness, example sturdy, whole, well, muscular these give a more bold idea to the word and make it seem more like a positive/reliable theme.

MAIN IDEA SO FAR- POSITIVE, whatever i make it has to have a positive feel, this has to be clear.


RESEARCH INTO FORMS/SHAPES INSPIRATION

Here i have selected a wide range of different veg and meal imagery seen as healthy, i looked these too see if there are any shapes or forms that are seen throughout. The forms could influence the shape of my type, how it bends and how the stems are created. I wanted to pick up if there was any styles that will help highlight the idea of a very natural theme ,  the imagery isn't perfect and different each time which is an idea i want to relate to my text too ( this links to help being a personal thing that different for each person too) . The forms aren't straight edges all the time but unperfect curves and lines, these built up the idea of nature linking to healthy and a healthy diet. i picked very positive imagery as this linked to the idea my text needs to be positive, the word has too many positive ideas and connotations behind it to ignore this.

1 IN 3 surfer from mental health issues in their lives, this stat could be used to influence my design work too, i feel its personal and relate well.
From theses images i can clear see how their is a very drastic contrast in the weight of the lines in the neutons, some are big and thick then suddenly reduce to smaller thinner lines, this could be seen but the weight of the lines in the typeface. A similar idea to the veg imagery is that the forms seen here are all imperfect and unique too, every part is natural and unrestricted but perfection or planned out ideas and i feel my work should reflect this too.  Free flowing and wild, the imagery gives of a positive free idea that i feel relates to my theme of health well, healthy brain power and mind set. The images her are simple, they are basic uncomplicated forms which over lap and move to create a over all busy effect but on their own are clear and readable.

BASIC IDEA

- type based around muscle forms, strength 

-bold reliable text, strong makes a statement

-loads of running lines that overlap to create the text shape (like neutons)

- slightly edit x height, keeping the same thicken but appearing thicker shows thin but healthy

- waves, free lines text thats imperfect

-text with massively contrasting weights

-1 in 3, every 3 letter colours to show power in numbers and who effected

-curly bold shapes text, like imagery in nature

-thin vein like images used to create letter forms, body health neutrons

MANIFESTOS

Idea 1 - This bespoke typeface will be designed to work on packaging and promotional work for clean eating/clean living, it'll have a minimalistic simple style that makes it easy for everyone to understand. It will reflect the idea clean living and eating is simple and easy,  the idea behind it to sell the products, bringing this lifestyle to anyone who pleases so applying to a general audience. It will have to be readable at different sizes because till will be needed to scale up or down for different projects, it should work for different products fitting the theme. Its should reflect the figure of a healthy person , be lean, thin, (not too thin) but strong lively to reflect the synonyms of the words different meanings. A dependable text that has multi uses and is very easy to understand, versatile yet made for this theme and purpose. The shapes and forms will be inspire but natural ideas, the forms seen in the research with less harsh lines but curved edges that show the healthy free imagery.

Idea 2 - This typeface will be based around the idea of mental healthy and chemically balanced, a unique twist on the theme that will show it in a newer light and maybe inform the audience more about issues. It will be mostly used on informative posters, or medication leaflet helping people with these issues, a typeface bespoke to this theme that gives people a great understand of the ideas behind mental illness and the causes. Bases around the forms seen in neuron images will give it a scientific official feel that wont be too overpowering so it appeal as a casual text, it wont be used to scare or confuse the audience but inform them its a chemical issues not themselves. The text will need to be clear and readable for any audience as people with the issues may struggle reading, it has to be very clear and minimal because of this.


DESIGN SKETCHES

These are my design sketches for my typeface, they are a collection because i had many different ideas that i wanted to try out, they all relate to my theme in one way or the other. i've played around with the x height and other height of most of them this is give a more natural, free idea to the typeface. 

These are my manual design sketches, as I had no existing knowledge of creating a typeface I felt it was better to get a wide range or manual experiments created so that I can see how to make it work before I start digitally. I work manually most of the time because I feel it allowed me to express my ideas better and have more control over the outcomes but the I digitalise my work so it can be smattered up and copied easier, in the digital age I have to be aware that I will need to make my work digital for it to be used in industry.  This also allowed me to create the different ideas quickly as I thought of them, I looked at the forms I researched combined with my ideas of healthy and my feedback to create these simple sketches which I will then pick the one that works best to create digitally for my idea. I used a wide range of the 9 typefaces as the background to get a wide range of ideas that fit the brief, I wanted to try out the way the different serif and sans serif types worked for my ideas before selecting one to work with because although I think I will use sans serif over all I could still use the basic forms of the serif type with the serifs removed if the layout worked better.

I feel like getting all my ideas down next to each other gave me a way of comparing, I could see which worked best and why simply. I showed these ideas at my interim crit as well with gave people a physical way to see my ideas, they didn’t have to look on a smaller screen they could see how I’d create the letterforms exactly how I wanted, I wanted feedback on which to take forward and work on more so this was very important for me to have opinions at this stage to help inform my design decisions. Overall the idea of creating these really helped my design process as I learn how the letters works and what I could change without distorting the letters too much, so ideas didn’t work but this just allowed me to analyse why they failed and learn for this.