Advanced Typography Assignment: Part 3

Well, my Advanced Typography class at UCLA Extension is almost at an end. I just got back from my second-to-last class, where I handed in my revised "Echo Park" magazine spreads, as well as a first-draft of a new assignment. I figure I'm overdue for sharing this stuff on the ol' blog...

First, we have the Echo Park designs. I first posted about this back in October. Basically, we all chose neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area and created expressive type-treatments that incorporated characteristics of the neighborhood, as well as infusing our own personal opinions. Next, we took our finished designs and put them into a magazine spread, further exploring creative uses of type while handling the text and other page matter.

I chose the historic Echo Park neighborhood, and you saw my first attempts with the magazine spreads (I'll post them again here, below). I tried three very different approaches. The feedback from the instructor was to push them all much further; rely less on images and shapes, focus on the typography and not to be afraid of challenging the "readability." The latter was very difficult for me (and some of the others in the class, too), as readability seems pretty important for a magazine spread!

However, the point of these exercises is that an artist can always dial back, and make a design more conservative. But it is liberating for designers to push themselves past their comfort zone and explore ideas that would never even occur to them, sticking to safe design choices. Clearly, school is the place to work on this, since there will never be as much freedom on a paying job, and I'm making the most of it.

Here's design one, before...


...and after...



Design two was supposed to look like a slick architecture magazine, like Dwell. Here's the first go...


..and here it is after a couple of revised versions...



The last version is a huge newspaper section. Before...


...and, after...



This was fun and extremely challenging. To be honest, I'm not convinced that they are truly resolved. I could go on tweaking individual type elements on these pages forever, and I don't know if they'd ever look "finished." That said, this is just a school project, and regardless of what I may think of the finished product, I learned a hell of a lot while working on them.

Today, I handed in the first-draft of my last project for this class. The assignment is to choose a musical group, and a charitable organization, and design an invitation to a fund-raising event where the band will be appearing. The idea is to bring the individual characters & styles of both into a design appropriate for the event. I chose the group Metric, and the Alzheimers Association for my charity. Here's what I have come up with, so far...





I presented these in class today, along with my "mood board" that shows what I'm using as inspiration; work by David Carson, Neville Brody and a bunch or other stuff. My designs went over pretty well, I'm happy to report. In previous assignments I believe that I relied too strongly on images and illustrative elements. Not really a shocker, since I'm an illustrator. As this is a typography class, I've been working hard to get away from my own comfort zone and solve design problems using only type and letter forms. I think I finally achieved that here.

I did receive some good suggestions for my revisions, due next week. I'll be sure to post my progress again here. Of course, I'd be happy to hear any feedback from you, as well, if you have any to share.