Visual Research Fall 2011

AWESOME.

daninordin — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:31:39 -0400

AWESOME.

Arrighi Sample Sheet

daninordin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:26:27 -0400

Arrighi Sample Sheet:

Here’s a sample sheet of Arrighi’s font.

P22 Operina font

daninordin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:25:26 -0400

P22 Operina font:

This font is based on Arrighi’s Operina styles.

Free download of Arrighi's Operina book

daninordin — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:24:31 -0400

Free download of Arrighi's Operina book:

Here’s a free downloadable PDF of Arrighi’s book on type.

Alphabet photo art gallery

daninordin — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:23:10 -0400

Alphabet photo art gallery:

Designer David Airey has a collection of interesting alphabet photos on his blog. Some really interesting stuff here, including “type” found in the negative space between buildings, a sign language alphabet made of matchbooks, and a number of found object alphabets.

AWESOME alphabet book for comic book/SciFi nerds

daninordin — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:40:20 -0400

AWESOME alphabet book for comic book/SciFi nerds:

Discovered this post this afternoon while doing some research and LOVE IT!

I’m still working through my ideas, but I have a...

daninordin — Sun, 18 Sep 2011 14:05:57 -0400

N is for Nanobot

M is for Molecule

I’m still working through my ideas, but I have a direction, tentatively titled “26 very small things.” At first, I was thinking in terms of the wide world of small things, but as the ideas started to take shape, I ended up in a decidedly more nerdy direction, which I like.

Illustrations will be kept intentionally rough, similar to the comic XKCD (which is extremely popular among my nerd friends, and myself), and I want to keep the graph paper motif; however, I also want to include a user-friendly description of the item I’m referencing as a way of teaching young kids science.

I know at least two new parents who will be receiving the finished book as a gift for their bebes.

Assignment 2: Uncle Jack's New Suit

childofthearts — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:36:44 -0400

Uncle Jack lived in a small village and was a regular in the local pub. It was one of those pubs where someone often had something to sell, a ticket for the big match, or in this case a suit. Maybe Uncle Jack mentioned that he needed a new suit, anyway, a tailor who was drinking in the bar, offered him a quality made-to-measure suit at a knockdown price.As promised in a week later the tailor brought in the trousers, they were a great fit and the latest cut, ‘very smart, very rakish’, his wife said. The jacket followed in a few days, and there was even a waist-coat. So far so good.

Uncle Jack was passionate about his cars and 40 years ago many people - like Uncle Jack - did car maintenance themselves. When his car broke down, there was no-one else to fix it and being in his best suit, would not stop Uncle Jack crawling underneath the engine to repair the starter motor. In fact in our family, ‘doing an Uncle Jack’ meant repairing a car in your best clothes. I always suspected that this was the reason why Uncle Jack was so tempted by the chance of a new suit.

Anne

Assignment 2

laboogz — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:32:08 -0400

The Tortoise & the Hare

The Tortoise and The Hare

There once was a speedy hare who bragged about how fast he could run. Tired of hearing him boast, Slow and Steady, the tortoise, challenged him to a race. All the animals in the forest gathered to watch.

Hare ran down the road for a while and then and paused to rest. He looked back at Slow and Steady and cried out, “How do you expect to win this race when you are walking along at your slow, slow pace?”

Hare stretched himself out alongside the road and fell asleep, thinking, “There is plenty of time to relax.”

Slow and Steady walked and walked. He never, ever stopped until he came to the finish line.

The animals who were watching cheered so loudly for Tortoise, they woke up Hare.

Hare stretched and yawned and began to run again, but it was too late. Tortoise was over the line.

After that, Hare always reminded himself, “Don’t brag about your lightning pace, for Slow and Steady won the race!”

Assignment #2:

valiciaviola-deactivated2012021 — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:56:02 -0400

So this originally was a joke that my friend Zoe made up and I wanted it as a story for class..so yea it’s now a story.

Once upon a time there was a man biking by the sea on a cliff, and in his basket was a loaf of choco bread. All of a sudden the choco bread jumps out of the basket, the man is startled by the bread’s decision to jump. Please choco bread get back in my basket said the man, willingly the choco bread climbs back into the basket. Five minuets later the choco bread decides to jumps out of the basket again. Come on! choco bread said the man wont you please just stay in the basket. The choco bread willing decides to once again climb back into the basket. With the bread back in the basket the man begins to peddle, yet again the bread leaps from the basket. Are you freaking serious CHOCO bread, this time the man picks up the bread and places it back into the basket. Listen hear choco bread the man said the next time you jump out of this basket I’m going to throw you into the ocean. The man now turning off of the cliff’s trail can see his house in the distance. All of a sudden the choco bread hurls it’s body out of the basket….. at the end of his whit the man grabbed the choco bread and chucked it into the ocean.

Part 2

Later that week the man and his wife choose to go into town to a pizzeria for dinner. Once settled at a table the server comes over to take their order. One large anchovie pizza please said the man, is that all the server replied, yes answered back the wife. About 15 minutes later the server comes back to the table with a piping hot pizza and proceeds to open a fresh can of anchovies to place on top. The server finishes opening the can and inside was the choco bread!!

Revised assignment #1 (historic version). Revised to push up the...

daninordin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:44:12 -0400

Revised assignment #1 (historic version). Revised to push up the “vintage ad” vibe.

Revised assignment #1: straight typeset version. Adjusted to...

daninordin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:05:30 -0400

Revised assignment #1: straight typeset version. Adjusted to look more like an academic paper, per Professor Felde’s critique.

Three little pigs Once upon a time, there were three little...

daninordin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 20:53:20 -0400

Three little pigs

Once upon a time, there were three little pigs. Each pig built a house.

One pig built a house of straw. One day, a wolf came along. He blew the house down, and ate the pig.

Another built a house of sticks. The wolf came by, blew it down and ate the pig.

Another built a house of bricks. The wolf came by, he huffed and he puffed, but he couldn’t blow the house down. And died from asphyxiation.

Assignment #2: My story

daninordin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:55:00 -0400

Three little pigs

Once upon a time, there were three little pigs. Each pig built a house. One pig built a house of straw. Another built a house of sticks. Another built a house of bricks.

One day, a wolf came along. First he went to the straw house. He blew it down and ate the pig.

Then he went to the stick house. He blew it down and ate the pig.

Last, he went to the brick house. He huffed and he puffed, but he couldn’t blow the house down.

"According to [Russian psychologist Pavel] Semonov, as scientists, we look closely at our environment..."

daninordin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 13:26:35 -0400

““According to [Russian psychologist Pavel] Semonov, as scientists, we look closely at our environment and try to reorganize the unknown in a sensible and meaningful way. As artists, we reorganize the known environment to create something entirely new.””

- Aronson, Eliot. 2008. The Social Animal, Tenth Edition. New York, NY: Worth Publishers

Changing the Default Font in Adobe Illustrator

daninordin — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:03:05 -0400

Changing the Default Font in Adobe Illustrator:

I found this article from the Adobe site showing how to change the default font in Adobe Illustrator. However, it didn’t work on my Macbook Pro; I don’t have the folder they’re telling us to look in.

Changing default font: Better link

daninordin — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 15:01:18 -0400

Changing default font: Better link:

This is a better illustrated tutorial than the Adobe link. I tried it, however, and it still didn’t work for me. Changing the “Normal Character Settings” before I started doing anything, however, did.

First assignment: Write a short passage about our thoughts...

daninordin — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 14:59:51 -0400

First assignment

Second assignment

First assignment: Write a short passage about our thoughts related to the conversation on Wednesday. Typeset it on a 5.5” by 8.5” piece of paper using a font that *isn’t* the Illustrator default.

Second assignment: Take the same passage, and create another piece inspired by some time in the history of communicated language. I chose ad designs from the 50’s, as I’ve always been fascinated by them.

Text:

When I was in middle school, my signature was full of curves, much like I was at the time. The capital letters, D and N, were carefully written with a swash, and I dotted the “i”s with open circles.

As I got into high school, my signature changed, becoming sharper, more angular. The carefully curved N became a series of curved slashes, and my capital D started looking more like an S or a J to some who didn’t know how to look. I finished the name with a flourish from the final n, which became the dot for the “i” in my last name.

Later, in my 20s, I took a job at Fleet Mortgage in Lincoln, RI, during one of the largest refinance booms in recent history. As a sales assistant, I was responsible for copying and data entering all of the applications that came in—100 per day during the height of the boom—and shipping them off to our processing center. Each day, I signed up to a dozen Airborne Express packing slips. By the time the boom ended a year into my job at Fleet, my signature had become little more than a capital D and small “in,” with that same flourish at the end.

Assignment One

flowcharts — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:23:43 -0400

Write a one or two paragraph reflection on the presentation and discussion we had in our first meeting. Change the default font in your Adobe Illustrator application to a new font of your choosing. Compose your text into a 5.5” x 8.5” inch rectangle and print it out onto paper. Practice reading your text aloud with great articulation and inflection. We will read them aloud in class.

Select an historical style of inscription that intrigues and fascinates you. Render your text in that style. It must be legible, yet capture the style completely. Use whatever media best support your style of inscription. Pay close attention to matters and quality of craft in making your artifacts. Honor your idea with perfect execution. This will require repeated attempts to learn how the style is rendered.

An early (approximately 1,500 BCE) indicator of design as a...

flowcharts — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:12:46 -0400

An early (approximately 1,500 BCE) indicator of design as a human activity is this fragment of ceramic record with the word “prepare for manufacture” on it, discovered in Greece recently.

It is presently the earliest known artifact with such writing within the European regions.