In response to OUGD406, Studio Brief 04 - 'Speaking from Experience' and the self initiated brief developed as a result, I produced a series of 5 A6 typographic motivational cards about time and its qualities in an attempt to inspire students to use it wisely. The cards have the potential to be used as decorative devices within student halls to make rooms more personal, combatting the often plain and lifeless aesthetic of these spaces.
The quotes that feature on each of the 5 cards include 'Time is golden,' 'Time is precious,' 'There is no time like the present,' 'There is no time to waste' and 'Make time for yourself.' These quotes both relevantly and appropriately address the relationship and outlook students should have with time in order to enjoy and succeed in student/university life with balance between academia and socialising. Potential for students to collect each of them is also provided.
Typographic information on the cards is communicated via two distinct type styles. The first, Univers optically kerned, all-caps and set at a point size of 20, provides a strong, bold typeface with clear prominence, distinction and authority. The typestyle successfully delivers an aesthetic of urgency - a considered decision in the deliverance of the notion of time and how it is used as vitally important.
The second is hand-drawn, written in Adobe illustrator using a creative pen and tablet for true-to-form lettering with fluency and authenticity of craft, which complimentarily contrasts with the first style. This type supplies the cards with a hand-crafted, personal and decorative aesthetic via which evident craftsmanship and instilled effort combats the 'throw-away' insignificance typically associated with the leaflets, flyers and posters that are handed to students during the preliminary weeks at university in such an abundance that they are overlooked and disregarded.
The second, elaborate typestyle and its attempts to create outcomes with greater sentiment are enhance via gold foiling that additionally aid the visual communication of the importance of time through the established connotations of gold and its associated perceptions.
The dynamic between each typographic style is made more apparent via the alternation in tonal/light value impacted by the combination of black and gold on white ground. The visual hierarchy and ordering of the perception of information is somewhat complex in that the black, digitally typed typographic information - though smaller - attracts the gaze first due to the tonal contrast and energy created as a result of the white ground it is set on, as well as due to the bold and dominating characters supplied from the Univers all-caps typeface. The gold typographic information is viewed secondary, enabling the quotes to be read in order and therefore understood with ease.
All typographic information is confined to a 300gsm A6 card - set with half-an-inch margins to ensure even spacing around the edge of each card. The handwritten typographic information meets the margin boundaries for compositional wholeness, whilst the typed Univers information is optically kerned, set at a point size of 20 and aligned for purposes of visual balance, clarity aesthetic harmony.
The A6 size of each individual card is small enough to not become an inconvenience to students, yet large enough to not go un-noticed and appear insignificant whilst maintaining importance. The size also enabled me to print multiple cards, 4, at once before cutting equally to size - making the production of them time and cost effective as no paper is wasted. Cards of this size are typical of such prints that students use to decorate their university accommodation walls and interiors as numerous copies/variations can be compositionally arranged together on an expanse of wall or pin-board.
Whilst also considering how these cards have the potential to motivate and inspire next year's level 04 students, they also address some of my own personal anxieties regarding time and therefore will also be put to use by myself as a reminder of time and how precious it truly is concerned with both educational and personal environments.
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