When designing my brutalist book covers for module 4.2, I went through a process that is highly familiar to me. Research, photograph, experiment, create, and reflect. Not necessarily all in that order. While I was responding to a particular brief, where I was instructed to have two book covers finalised and completed. There was much more opportunity for creative exploration with what I was producing, leading up to my final realised book covers. Each cover required extensive thought about, content, composition, colour, typography etc, all these things coming together to produce a relevant cover design.
In terms of reaching the full potential of my work and experimenting with what could be. I think Michael Connolly’s work with chain generative, code-based art, is really interesting. My cover designs use a mixture of geometric elements and shapes. I used these to create both type and imagery, and I think this use of technology would take this project in a new direction especially for me. The iterations of work that were all manually designed by me took time. Code based artwork would allow me to create an algorithm that can assemble over 100 pieces of work in minutes. This would extend my projects massively. Being able to view a wide range of designs simultaneously, all things that I would not have thought of. It gives me an opportunity to push the typographic element of my work further. This would result in a piece of work that uses a set of traditional analogue skills, as well as more advanced technological ones.
Looking at the typography of my first cover design, the typography of the title lets it down. It is basic and does not mould with the rest of the design nearly as well as it could. ‘Variable Fonts’ allows users to experiment with over 350 different fonts. Each font has a set (or only one) of sliders which allow you to tamper with weight, width, optical size, slant, and lots more depending on font. I really enjoyed playing with these settings and getting a proper sense of each one’s potential within each design. I have found when designing that I feel a bit lost sometimes when it comes to typography. In think the application of ‘Variable Fonts’ I hope to expand my inspiration when it comes to placing type with my designs.
