If anyone's been checking out my daily miscellany blog, you will know that I have spent weeks researching this project! We had to illustrate 3 quotes or slogans Typographically and without using a mac at any stage. Perfect for me because although I love type, I can't stand sitting in front of a computer for hours! I started out by looking at old typefaces and ornamental type, then decided to focus on traditional methods of creating type. I ended up choosing methods that lent themselves to the quotes I had chosen, so it's not really much of a series!
For '50,000,000 I chose to look at pen and ink as this quote related to the prohibition movement in the USA in the 1920s & 1930s and in my research I found lots of ornate alcohol labels like this. Clearly you need several years practice to become good with a dip pen! The choice of letterpress for the Sun quote is pretty obvious seeing as it relates to the newspaper. The one I enjoyed the most was painting the Viagra quote on wood (anyone get the pun? my tutor didn't) and for this my inspiration was adverts painted on the sides of buildings etc.
The Viagra one was by far my favourite (despite being very laborious) and it's something that I'm going to do a lot more of! Also, one of the tutors offered to buy the Sun print so I'm pretty proud of that!
I've been doing a lot of work the last few days, mostly catching up on things I should have done months ago! I have my assessment in a week but I'm well on the way to being finished. Anyway, today I was finally finishing off a project I started in March. It's a cd cover for Djangology by Django Reinhardt. I did a lot of research into his life, which was pretty extraordinary. I came up with the idea of using torn down posters because in the later years of his career he became a little erratic and wouldn't turn up to sell out gigs because he wanted to go for a walk and be by himself. I wanted to convey the idea of his gig posters being torn down, but also showing all the interesting things that he lived through that influenced him. I used a bit of Gypsy imagery in the form of paisley patterns and art, I tried to convey his era through adverts and film posters from the 1930s and 1940s, and also a lot of type from that era. Django was illiterate and very embarrassed about it which also ties in quite well with the torn up type. These are all images I'm using for the CD insert, they're just collages on wood. I'm also doing the same sort of thing for the cover. I just have to work out a way of getting a title and track list on there without it looking awful!
