26 Mar 08
Expressive words
I’m working on a piece for a few days, and it’s still not ready. Usually, I give up after a few tries, but this one is getting out really well. It’s a typography-related thing, so don’t miss out. Our favourite typography blog iLT inspired it and I almost finished it. Such a great feeling, the almost finished state: all the hard work is done, you fine tune, trying to perfect it, and soon you’ll get it out on the world.
Meanwhile, a few of typography’s friends started some sort of a thread: expressive words. The idea is to take a few words and use typography to express their meaning, without changing the letterforms. Check out these great exercises by Karly Barret, then Matt Jewel’s response and yet another one from Geof.
Now it’s my turn. I would like to say that I limited myself to Helvetica. I wanted to really stretch this to its limits. Maybe there’s someone to take the challenge?
I really liked “bloom” in all of the above. And I couldn’t do it. I was thinking to giving the impression of a flower; in the end, it really feels like a fountain to me, due to the lowercase m.
The next word I want to show to you is magic. I really can’t think of another more pleasant way to write this than Karly’s piece. But I did try, this one is a real challenge. At first, I wanted to emulate a magic number, and I ended up with the big m functioning like two cabins… abracadabra and the letters a and g get transformed into i and c. Do you perceive it as such? Maybe the other one is better, more subtle.
My take on jump is a bit boring. It’s close to what Matt did, but mine is horizontal.
The first word that I actually designed was lost. I wanted to end with it because I think it’s better than the others. The letter s is lost to the other three, being placed in another space. After a good night’s sleep, I realized that this idea would go so much better for a word like hidden. Although lost could mean hidden, it’s a bit of a stretch. So, I think of my lost as being more abstract :)
In the end, I decided I should get a totally random word. I remembered thefreedictionary.com has a Word of the day feature. Yesterday’s word turned out to be walloping. As a noun, it means “A sound thrashing or defeat.” I instantly saw the picture in my head, and here’s the result:
Please comment away! Any feedback is most welcomed.
Tags: bloom, helvetica, lost, magic, thinking with type, typography, walloping
Posted in typography on Wednesday, March 26th, 2008 1:04 pm
7 Responses to “Expressive words”
26 Mar 08
2:52 pm
Great work. I really magic with the omitted a. Great idea. I need to collect all of these and mention them on the next Sunday type.
26 Mar 08
3:02 pm
Hey,
You’ve got some good ideas going on this page! I like the thought behind bloom, did you consider reversing the word so the ‘B’ is the largest character? I think that might have looked a little better due to the nature of the letter (e.g. ‘boom’, ‘bang’, ‘big’) and would avoid the fountain-like appearance of the ‘m’ as you said.
Your second ‘magic’ is really great. Good idea on that one and actually Helvetica suits it really well. Jump’s OK but I can’t really feet the action of ‘jumping’ which is a little disappointing. I think keeping any idea of ‘jump’ vertical is best simply because you do jump vertically.
I really love ‘lost’. An idea might be to perhaps make the ’s’ larger so the top and bottom are in contact with the top and bottom of the ‘o’. ‘Hidden’ again is a good idea, what I might have done is make one letter cramped up against two others (probably the second ‘d’ as you have used) instead of merging it with the ‘e’, but again it still works pretty well.
‘Walloping’ is again really good, perhaps make the ‘w’ sligher larger? But I really like that one. Good work overall, and thanks for linking to my blog btw.
26 Mar 08
9:34 pm
Very nicely done. My favorite is definitely your second take on magic. Hidden works really well too and walloping looks awesome. Lost isn’t quite working for me. The s seems almost rebellious to me — like it knows where it’s supposed be but wants to do its own thing. I actually tried a very similar bloom in my original sketches. Great minds think alike.
27 Mar 08
2:05 pm
vlad
Hey guys! Really interesting, you all liked magic with the a missing.
Johno: thanks!
Matt: Reversing bloom might really work a lot better. I will try it for sure. Jump, I know, feels more like gap :) i think the w in walloping could use enlargement, I didn’ really see it… it is rather thin, if not small. I didn’t quite get your idea about hidden, perhaps you could illustrate :P
Karly: I figured lost won’t work, but I couldn’t find another way of putting it, besides what you already did. So that’s why I made hidden. Rebellious is a nice word to do using a rebelled s.
01 Apr 08
7:42 am
I saw the world Vlad, clicked on it and was surprised that it wasn’t a link to the fonts I made.
Very disappinted until I read the article…interesting use of type.
Sorry for the ego
M.
01 Apr 08
12:00 pm
vlad
So where is that link to the fonts you made? :)
07 May 08
11:13 pm
Expressive words — kristarella.com
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