Kristin Becker's DTC Classes at WSU

Art covers a broad range of disciplines, and one of the more fascinating genres of art style is depicted in comic books. The defining aspect of comic-style art is its ability to tell a story through a sequence of panels. Though usually separated by space, each comic panel builds upon the ones before it, the various parts of the series coming together to tell a story. Also, other aspects such as drawing style, text bubbles, and narrative boxes help create a cohesive identity for comics as a whole.

“Coffee”, a comic found in the Dune comic book at the WSU Art Museum

On our trip to the WSU Art Museum, one such example of comic book prowess really spoke to me. Looking through the various examples reminded me of my childhood, flipping through comic books and magazines, drinking in the stories they told through page after page of action and antics. Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and all the various superhero comics available to me were devoured in a rush, with long nights of reading with a light under the covers or in the backseat while my parents ran errands. Old-school comics hold a near and dear place in my heart, that can’t be replaced by the digital and technological marvels of today.

Flipping through the examples in the Dunes comic book, I happened upon this page. The whimsical aspect of this page was greatly accentuated by the exaggerated actions taken by the rabbit; what might otherwise be interpreted as a simple overreaction to the taste of coffee is now a subject of comedic value. Though there isn’t much text, what little there is becomes a useful tool to help the reader understand the rest of the comic. Through this short sentence “Ah!/Coffee!/How I love/the way you smell/but not/the way/you taste”, a whole rollercoaster of emotions is conveyed to the reader in a short sequence. The font used lends itself to the comic; the sans-serif, hand-drawn letters fit well with the organic, fun, lighthearted theme of the comic. If the text was typed rather than handwritten, I believe that the effect would be drastically different. While I am pursuing an entirely different kind of text for my project, I think that it’s important to keep in mind how the context of the piece itself can be affected by the appearance of the text and to incorporate my text as well as I possibly can. I myself am trying to create a typeface heavily influenced by Hebrew script; perhaps handwriting the font myself would be an avenue of approach that I can consider. I’ll remember this lesson as I move forward!

“If White People Didn’t Invent Air” by Dread Scott
Screen Print, 2001, 24 X 18 inches

The example I chose to write about from our visit to the WSU Art Museum is by the visual artist Dread Scott. He makes revolutionary art to propel history forward. While he was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he first received national attention due to his arts transgressive use of the American Flag. I found this piece interesting because before I even did any research on the artist, I could already tell what kind of art he created. Based on the words and the photo, I could tell this piece was criticizing history. The words read “If white people didn’t invent air, what would we breathe?” These words seemed powerful to me, and it made me want to know more about the piece. What also caught my attention was how the author was able to put the text on top of the photo without taking away from the image or text, they balance out really well in my opinion. This made me think about how I wanted to design my poster for project 2. I had an idea of including a  photo but I thought it would be hard to make the text stand out without taking away from the overall poster design idea. How the artist used black and white with a color that wasn’t too bold but also not too soft or the contrast, really made this piece successful. This piece gave me some ideas and rules to follow if I would like to make similar design choices. Since I am using song lyrics, I thought about maybe creating an album cover type of poster. Instead of the artist, the title of the album, or even cover art being the main focus I wanted the selected lyrics to be the main focus. Overall, this piece helped me see that my idea is possible to do without losing the complete meaning of the piece.

Illustration from “Trailer Blaze: Short Run”s Ladies Comics & Books Residency at the Sou-wester on beautiful Long Beach in Seaview, WA”.

The piece I have chosen is from the “Trailer Blaze: Short Run”s Ladies Comics: Books Residency at the Sou-wester on beautiful Long Beach in Seaview, WA” zine! On the particular page, there is not text present but I like the variety of density of the lines of the seats that are drawn that have a brush like texture. I understand that there is no text, but I want to use this a inspiration and probably influence in my typeface. However, since I want to lean towards a modular based design rather than a material based… I will not have the brush strokes but I hope to use a variety of thickness/density in my lines for each letter. I also like the black with an accent color! Again, with the watercolor texture.. I am not sure I will do that for my modular based letters, but it gives me the idea of do blocks and shapes of colors around my text that is offset rather than making the design look neat. Although each chair is different and not exact, they all have a rhythm between them all, creating a consistent look which I hope to create within my typeface!

I hope that my typeface over all will have a clear look and personality like each chair has but a rhythm between each letter, making it clear that my letters will represent song lyrics whether I finalize with a twenty one pilots or Halsey song.

This photo shows Andy Warhol’s “Paris Review 18” at the WSU Museum of Art.

I selected Andy Warhol’s “Paris Review 18” as the work I will analyze. This piece features a reproduction of someone’s handwriting, which is a strong cursive. It is messy, giving it a very human look to it. I selected this piece because it shows an imperfect form of calligraphy. It has the classic hard thick and thin lines to the text, and it has a very rushed look. I am hoping to give my typeface a calligraphic look, and I want it to be imperfect, like this handwriting.

I think the subject of the piece is very interesting, as it is very simple, but quite beautiful. I feel it exemplifies the “less is more” saying. I hope to take that into consideration as I create my typeface.

I find the effortless look of the text to be quite beautiful. I would like to add that feel to my font, to give it a more elegant and polished look, while still being imperfect. Something that is interesting to me is that no two letters or numbers are the same. For example, in the price column for the $6.00 vodka, the zeros are not even close to the same. This is an interesting idea, because that’s how people really write. We are never able to create the same exact letter again. However, I don’t know how that could be transferred to a typeface. Maybe you could have a few variations of each letter, so not every one is the same. But that seems very impractical for the creation of a typeface. I suppose that’s why people will always have a soft spot for hand-written letters.

By looking at this example as well as examples of calligraphic texts, I hope to find a happy medium between the two to give my text an organic feel while also having it be able to be somewhat reproduced

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Excerpt from the comic Apocalypse Dad by  Taylor Dow

When we went to the WSU Art Museum I gravitated toward the comic books on the table. In a previous DTC 201 class I was able to hold and flip through those same comics, so I recognized their names and art style. The one that stood out to me last time and this time around was the comic “Apocalypse Dad” by Taylor Dow. It always made me wonder if the dad would find his family, or if the comic was just about him wandering, lost and alone. I liked the thin and simple font, because it looked very “homemade” and not over processed, like from a computer program. It made the comic feel just that more authentic. Upon take a quick look through it, the font seems to flow around the artistry, as the character yells into the world and travels his way around. The letters are uneven, but that follows the theme of the comic. They are uneven because it signifies the struggle of the main character.

After looking around at all of the different art and fonts incorporated while at the WSU Art Museum, I feel that I have somewhat of a better grasp of what I want to do for my project. I was originally opposed to thin letters, but I can now see that they can be helpful in looking more modern, and also appearing more minimalistic. They comic also showed me that it’s okay to have your letters be a bit shaky. I was originally worried that my letters wouldn’t be as “uniform and straight” as I had originally planned, and now I feel that if everything follows a general theme, then I can still come up with a solid font that incorporates everything I need it to.

The individual pages that were drawn by different artists in the Dunes comic books were very interesting to me. Being able to see two different artists on two pages right next to one another was what caught my attention the most, being able to see the difference in style and seeing how one’s approach to the drawings is what brands it as their own style. It’s also fascinating, in that there is no theme as to what the the artists are limited to, so being able to see what the comic book artists drew to represent themselves in a single page was pretty interesting. I also really enjoyed the concept behind the Dunes comic books; how they’re usually done in bar settings, where artists have some beers and food whilst their drawing these pages during the event – which is then all compiled together to form editions.

“Dune Vs. Pizza” from one of the Dune comic book

In this one page from one of the Dunes comic books, It really caught my attention because it was something that I wanted to go for. The artist incorporates the words ‘DUNE VS PIZZA’ into his page, but the font choice that he chose to design the words in have a sense of incorporation with his overall artwork. I also want to approach my type face design, in that it has a sense of accordance with the movie itself. I would say this page helped influence as to how I should go about approaching my typeface. Seeing the balance between the artwork and his lettering, as well as the way he had positioned some artwork in the foreground of the letters and some in the background; it gave me a sense of direction as to how I might approach my poster design.

Gnartoons’ page in the Dunes comic book

Another example from that I felt did a great job of incorporating text style with their artwork, was this page. The artwork overall had very rounded, elongated shapes (nose, tongue, face, etc.). The bolded text themselves are also rounded like that of the drawings, which also give similarity to that sense of accordance. This page also helped influence as to how I should look for some common characteristic throughout the movie I chose, and how to incorporate those dominate characteristics into my typeface.

Book Cover: Oodles of Doodles: and Assorted Sketcharoos by Tom Vandeusen. 2012-2014

I chose a book called Oodles of Doodles: and Assorted Sketcharoos by Tom Vandeusen. It stood out to me immediately because of how artistic it was. Although it is mainly a book of sketches there are text elements to the book. The text is unique and definitely mimics the art in the book. I liked how the text worked together with the artwork since this is what we are going to try to achieve when we make the posters for our text. The text in this material looked organic and handmade, not modular. The fonts have irregularities which make sense since it was created by hand.

The organic feeling of this material is useful for my design because I am trying to create a design that is organic, yet still somewhat modular as well. There are actually different types of fonts in the book that the author has created himself. The font used to write the word BENTLY reminded me of my ideas for my font since it is all uppercase and wide.

Sketches in the book. Two different fonts are depicted.

I also really liked the book cover which uses graphics in the title as well as upper case letters. The title also has a good distribution of heavy and lightweight which makes it really effective. The black circles and squares anchor the font well. Tom’s fonts are very artistic which works well with his book since it showcases his art. This piece of material is useful for my font design because I am looking to make it more artistic and think outside of the box. Since I am designing my font around summertime and the beach, I want it to have a handmade, natural feel while still creating it in Adobe Illustrator. I need to experiment more with Adobe Illustrator as well as get feedback in class so that my final font exemplifies my source text well, like this book showcases.

Art done by Nancy Chunn Taken: Washington State University’s Art Museum

The following piece was done by artist Nancy Chunn and the piece was meant to depict the content of individual news articles from The New York Times using visual representations. I, personally believe that this article is relevant to myself because the biggest problem I have ran into is how I am going to visually represent my own typeface. The use of visuals, in this case symbols, on this news paper really helps me grasp a better idea on how I should design my visual. Through this newspaper I also noticed that the “New York Times” typeface has a similar structure to my own, but my own typeface lacks a strong structure. By using this piece I was able to “stabilize” the look of my font and I was also able to change some letters completely due to some inspiration. The structure of the type that Nancy uses is extremely basic, but it get’s the point through and this also slightly changed how my letters looked because I was over-killing on the “pretty” aspect rather than the “effective” aspect. Also, by taking out the crazy lines and curves, the space, in between letters when in words, do not look so wide and awkward. So, I took away a lot of unnecessary curves and lines that may skew the look of the individual letters. I also changed the rule for the letter “I” and made other exceptions because I noticed the letters “J” in the word “just” and “I” in the word “girls” were smaller widths than the rest of the typeface and I was having an issue with making the letter “I” because I was trying to make it the same size as the other letters. The use of different colors also helped influence a new idea for my type. Originally, I was going to go for a solid black typeface, but after seeing how the colors also represent the articles along with the type inspired me to make my letters a little thicker for possible color use.