Typography Portrait, The LETTER PORTRAIT: (from “Design
for Communication” by Elizabeth Resnick)
Before you get started: This will be completed on Adobe Illustrator 2020 on the Aims Virtual Computer Lab. Create a "letter_portrait" folder in your GRAPHIC FOLDER ON YOUR SHARED GOOGLE DRIVE. Save all of the work that you complete
for this project into that folder. For this project, you will also need a SELFIE! Grab your smartphone and either send yourself your favorite selfie or take a photo in class to use for this project.
Assignment Brief: Your
assignment is to create a “Typography
Portrait” using Adobe Illustrator. A Typography Portrait is a
portrait that uses only typographic characters for its pallette.
Use letters (which might be thought to represent sounds) to illustrate
your face, thinking about how your design reflects you as a designer
and as a person. Think about identity and study your face and its characteristics.
Examine the different letters to determine what will represent
you best.
Professional and Highland Graphic Design Student
Samples for Inspiration: Click on this
link to see some samples that might inspire you!
Objectives: Create an awareness of the design possibilities of typography.
Learning and Practice:
Before working on this project, students should have completed the videos from the ADD TEXT TO YOUR DESIGN page from Adobe.com.
Adobe Illustrator Typography Practice: We start with the image above. You
will receive credit for completing the practice portrait. Using Adobe Illustrator, recreate the above image, imitating all of the letters and placement to create a figure that looks just like "Comma Head Guy." The "hair" is a large comma, find one that works. Completing COMMA HEAD GUY is worth 25 points, so make sure you save it to your folder!
The Process for completing
the Typography Portrait:
- SELFIE CANVAS: Locate or take a "SELFIE." Forward it to your school email. Then, FILE>PLACE your selfie into
Illustrator. Resize the image as needed to fit onto your canvas.
If excess
parts of your photograph
go over the edge of the canvas, don't worry, they will not be
seen on the final JPEG.
- RENAME your picture layer as ORIGINAL PHOTO.
- Create a New Layer and call it "Typography".
- On this new layer, use the TEXT TOOL to create letters, numbers and symbols, as needed, to create the typographical elements needed to create your portrait.
- You may use any font that you wish, but please only use ONE font for this project.
- Use the EYEBALL icon to TURN OFF the ORIGINAL
PHOTO layer, as needed. You will be turning on and off this
Layer
as you go to see the
progress of your typography
portrait.
- Using the letters, numbers or symbols you have
just typed, you will be creating your typography portrait. Here
are the RULES for the project:
- DO NOT use rows and rows of "l"s to outline your face! BORING! This should be an exercise in creating areas of color and shade that match your portrait, DO NOT OUTLINE!
- You can ROTATE or RESIZE your letters as much
as you wish, but...
- PLEASE RETAIN THE ORIGINAL SHAPE OF YOUR
LETTERS (by holding down SHIFT when resizing)
- If you wish to use COLOR for your letters, etc., you can!
- Freel free use include words and phrases into your work, but this is primarily a LETTER TYPOGRAPHY exercise.
- Do your best to create a typographic portrait
that looks like you and is true to the original photograph!
- If you need to save your TYPOGRAPHY portrait before it is completed, make
sure that you FILE>SAVE AS an .AI FILE! This will preserve all of
the layers and letters for later manipulation!
- Make sure to DELETE or use the EYEBALL to get rid
of the original image, then EXPORT this as a JPEG and save it to
your "letter_portrait" folder.
- If
anyone wishes to try to create an INVERTED portrait, where the letters
are white on a black background, you can. You will need to
use the RECTANGLE SHAPE tool in illustrator to place a new layer between
the Photograph and your TEXT. Your letters will have to be in WHITE
instead of BLACK.
SAMPLE
PORTRAITS: See below. Please note that
not all of these portraits are following the same rules for creation
that you have above. Many of them use repeated letters, you cannot
do so for this project!
Grading: This
assignment will be worth a total of 125 points:
- 25 points for proper completion of the practice Typography
Portrait.
- 50 points for proper completion of the personal Typography
Portrait, while taking into account all of the rules of the project.
- 50
based upon Mr. B.'s whims, regarding the overall look, creativity
and artistic
merit
of the
final
product.
|