The Zine assignment revolved around the idea of our own personal truism. My truism was “Misery Creates Happiness.” We had to pick two colors, in which I picked green and blue as they were cool toned colors that would give a somber feeling to my Zine. We used Adobe Illustrator to make and process the images, so they would properly be printed using the Risograph. I made use of the overlapping technique. which can be used when printing a Zine on a Risograph, so that I would be able to make use of a 3rd color (a mixture of blue and green). I chose to use a bird getting shot by an arrow as a storyline for explaining my truism. This was because I felt that death was something that everyone could relate to, and many times when someone is faced with death of a loved one, they often start to internalize it. Therefore, my goal for this Zine was to aid people in the process of grief and overcoming it.

This Typography assignment was built off of the Display Typeface assignment. We had to use our personally designed Display Typeface in a series of 30 different type specimen posters inspired by our typeface. Amongst these, 5 were a full character set, 10 were a single character, 10 were a sentence or quote and 5 were a combination of the previous. In the next step, there were 4 that picked from the 30, one from each category. We had to refine these 4 as our final designs and they had to be set up so they would properly print on a Risograph. Finally, out of the 4 chosen we had to pick 2 that we further revised. It was revised by picking an existing typeface that complimented our display typeface. In these 2 posters we had to write a 3-5 sentence paragraph describing the typeface, include the typeface name, and add our name, location and date. These 2 designs were then sent to the Risograph to be printed out as a physical copy. In my posters, the initial Display Typeface was inspired by planets, therefore in my final posters, I made a design in a circle shape to represent a planet and the consecutive letters to represent a shooting star, as stars were a part of the typeface. I chose to not print on colored paper as my color scheme for the typeface did not match any paper colors as it would have drowned out the type.

Initially, in this assignment we were each randomly assigned a photo set from a blog. We were supposed to create a display typeface inspired by a photo set. The photo I was assigned was a set of close up photos of a planet. We used the website Fontstruct to create this typeface. Due to the system we were working on, I was constrained to making my typeface in a grid form using given shapes and strokes, this proved to be very challenging. A display typeface is a typeface intended for short sentenced and large-scale purposes. Therefore, they are often very exaggerated or to express a certain attitude or vibe. In my final display typeface, I used small stars and banner-like streaks to represent shooting stars and space.

The Matchbook assignment was to make a real-life Matchbook that was inspired by a film. The film I chose was Pan’s Labyrinth directed by Guillermo Del Toro, specifically focusing on the scene of the Pale Man. This scene was very rich with red and gold tones as well as fruit and food that were red. This scene inspired me to make this Matchbook be something that could be found in this particular scene. Therefore, I included digital art pomegranates and berries on the inside of the matchbook and made the outside be a dull blue. This color choice was because the scene of the Pale Man took place “within” a vivid colored imaginary world, whereas the real world was very dull. We also had to use an appropriate type for the matchbook that would fit the film that we chose. This taught me a lot about how to choose appropriate typefaces by researching the different types of font and backgrounds of various fonts.

The Monogram assignment was to create the initials of our own name using a kit that provided parts that could make up a letter. I found this assignment to be somewhat challenging as you were forced to work within the parameters of the kit. We also had to use 2 formal elements of type specimen we had made in a previous assignment. Therefore, mine had elements of Display and Serif classes. It was Display since it was bold and abstractly put together and it was serif since it had Slab Serif elements within it.