Inspiration Work and Experimentation

After researching three typographic artists, I went to to experiment on Adobe Illustrator, using inspiration from David Carson. I really loved his designs as they are very original, and show a lot of emotion and theme behind the typography, the layout and placement and the colours used. I created seven designs, using different fonts each time in black.

In my first design, I played around with the placement, spacing and point size on each letter. I used the font 'Papyrus' in a regular font style, as it was a similar design to Carson's. I increased the point size on the I so it would stand out, and on the O, because it looks like the viewer should look and wander through the 'hole' to gain inspiration (as this is the word I used in my experimentation). By stretching the letters both vertically and horizontally, the strokes changed, making the graphics of the font sharper and clearer. The layout of the characters are pretty legible, however Carson's style of disregarding type rules applies in some aspects, such as no columns, base lines, caps lines, equal spacing and size. I really like this first design as width of the strokes changes a lot in each of the characters, and the base, caps, descending and ascending lines are all different, therefore creating a strange-looking. but funky piece of typography.

 In this second design. I included two different fonts, 'Gloucester MT extra Condensed' and 'Comic Sans MS', both in a regular type style. I used one of Carson's designs when thinking of my own, which made my work look crazy and funky, which would fit really well in the 1980's theme for magazine typography. I placed each individual character roughly in the same place, as the types used are harder to read than simpler fonts, such as Helvetica or Times New Roman. I feel that if it was to be used for headings on magazines or articles, it would definitely pull people in as it is very funky and makes it look inviting to read. By overlapping two different fonts, I increased and altered the weights in the strokes, the width of the characters and the hight from the base line to the caps line and the ascending line.

This is my third design, using 'HanziPen TC' in a regular font style. I used the idea of the larger 'O' form my first design to increase the point size on another 'O'. I feel that this design is less like Carson than my other ideas, as the type is mostly the same, apart from the angle which the characters are placed. 

I used 'Superclarendon' in a bold type style. I feel that this design is very alike Carson's as I have still used the column rule, however i have disregarded the others; the spacing in-between the base line and   cap hight and in-between each individual character, kerning them closer together. I really like this idea as it is still very legible, but it creates a deep, dark, thick atmosphere.  This would be good to use for poster titles to catch attention quickly. 

I used the font 'DIN Alternative' in a bold type style, and altered the weight of the characters. By kerning all the characters together so that some of them overlapped each other, and flipping one letter at the end, the type could come across as squashy, however the viewer is still able to read it clearly. 

I quite like this design as it creates tension towards the viewer, by using serifs on the characters. I used 'Charlemagne' in a bold text type, which creates a medieval atmosphere. It is a funky design, however does not link in very well with the 1980's theme. I arranged the characters so that the base line created a wave. This made it look inspiring to look at, and draws the reader in. I kerned to characters together, creating some to overlap, making the text seem fun. By increasing and decreasing the sizes of each individual character also created a fun feeling. 

In this design, I used 'Stencil' in a regular type style. By gaining inspiration from Carson's 'Nike' advert poster, I used the same method of block colours and reverse type. I wanted to cover up little amounts of white space, creating tension of the black.

In this next design, I wanted to make the type easy to read however look funky and different. I used the type rules when aligning each individual character to make sure they were in line, however by splitting the letters on different base lines it creates a bold heading, When looking at this design I think of tree stumps or tall buildings because of the placement of the letters. I really feel that this design relates to Carson as the type style is simple but the placement of the characters is odd but makes me look further into the text/subject.