Design 115 Process Manual by Arielle Cababat
Project 1: Minimal Letterforms We were required to perform examinations of the forms of letterforms. A composition was to be made using the aspects of composition such as juxtaposition, contrast, form/counterform, summetry, and balance. Typefaces were provided to make these compositions; Centaur, Garamond, Memphis, Helvetica, Bodoni, Friz Quadrata. We were forbidden from rotating the letters and using other colors besides black and white along with mixing typefaces and capital letters with lower case letters within the compostion.
I chose to use Centaur for its thin yet structured strokes for this assignment. I magified the letterforms and cropped them using 1’’ by 1’’ squares drawn on the tracing paper. I traced the letterforms, often focusing on the characteristics that made each letterform unique. I placed the letters in quadrants with 1/16 in borders since the final version was going to have 4’’ by 4’’ with 1/4 in borders.
Then I magnified the typeface even more, making sure that everything was proportional. This time the borders were 1/8 in. I did the same process when it was time to increase the letterforms again with 3’’ by 3’’ squares and 3/16 in borders.
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B G QR
For the final phase, I used Adobe Illustrator to make my composition, creating a clipping mask so that I can freely move the letters within the squares. I chose to use the capital letters G, B, Q, and R. I mostly focused on the round strokes of each letter so that the composition can look unified.
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Project 2: Type Hierarchy Studies For this project, we mostly did in phases. in the first phase, we stuck with one size and one weight of the typeface Univers. I drew my layout with a 10’’ by 10’’ page size. Acutally I drew several layouts with various margin lengths and columns. With those layouts, I placed the waxed paper containing the content and experimented with the placement.
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As we continued with each phase, we were given more room to experiment with the two different weights and sizes of the typeface.
Visible Language
Visible Language
A lecture series exploring the relationship between form and content Lectures are free and open to the public
A lecture series exploring the relationship between form and content
Orientation and disorientation
Ruedi Baur Nicholas Felton Richard Saul Wurman
Thursday, December 3 at 6 pm 135 Walker Hall UC Davis
More than just a love of letters Zuzana Licko Jonathan Hoefler Tobias Frere-Jones Thursday, December 10 at 6 pm 135 Walker Hall UC Davis
Matter/anti-matter/does it matter? Stefan Sagmeister Andrew Blauvelt Marian Bantjes Thursday, December 17 at 7 pm Design Museum UC Davis
Orientation and disorientation Ruedi Baur Nicholas Felton Richard Saul Wurman Thursday, December 3 at 6 pm 135 Walker Hall UC Davis
More than just a love of letters Zuzana Licko Jonathan Hoefler Tobias Frere-Jones Thursday, December 10 at 6 pm 135 Walker Hall UC Davis
Matter/anti-matter/does it matter? Marian Bantjes Andrew Blauvelt Stefan Sagmeister Thursday, December 17 at 7 pm Design Museum UC Davis Lectures are free and open to the public
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Once I got to Set 2 and 3, I allowed myself the freedom to experiment more with the typeface since I didn’t allow myself to do so earlier. I really like playing with the design aspect “line of continuation�. So I experimented with aligning the content with a harsh angled line for Set 2A.
I used the titles of the lectures to make the line itself and placed the other content such as the guest lecturers and the time and place of the lectures parallel to the baseline for Set 2B.
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In Set 3A, I played with angles as the content was riding the line I made for them to sit on.
Set 3B was probably my most experimented phase. I use big rectangles to hold the content and set the whole thing at an angle.
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Project 3: Book Design This project was probably the most planned and organized I did so far. We had to use the text and images provided to create a book design. We also had to choose a typeface and were able to use colors for our book design. I began planning my design by reading through the text to see what is it trying to communicate. I often wrote on the printout so that I could get a stronger idea of what kind of design I was going to make for this project.
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After that brainstorm, I continued to draw out the layout of the pages in the book in spreads. I knew that I did not have a lot of time on my hands so this would be considered the second brainstorm as I had to think about incorporating the images for the content without make them look out of place.
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Not only that, but I had to consider the cover of the book. So I drew several iterations to make sure it was simple but the word “play� was the focus as Paul Rand made it very important in the introduction.
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Following the spreads I drew out, I started on designing my book in Adobe InDesign. I decided to use the typeface Univers for the body text and headlines. In order to highlight the quotes in the introduction, I decided to use different weights of the same typeface. The color for the type was a yellow-orange color in order to compliment the blue color scheme.
A lot of the images provided were highly pixelated. So I had to use Illustrator to redraw some of them. However, some were pictures that just could not be redone in Illustrator. Thus, I used Photoshop to not only to increase the resolution of the image, but to increase the size of it without having the file size go over its limit.
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In order to make sure the reader can focus on reading the content, I made use of the negative space, using black font on white paper since that was the most legible. For the headlines, I also made them match the blue theme but used a bark blue to make them legible. I placed the images in the positive space so that they do not draw attention from the text.
I printed out the book in booklets so that Professor Gale Okumura could look over them. Reflecting on her advice, I redid some of my designs and repeated the process until it was time for me to give the pdf files to the printing company so that I could bind by book in time.
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I binded the book with clamps and a piece of wood after I glued the pages together. I let the book sit with the clamps binding it over night to make sure it was secured. I used a gradient on the book cover to highlight the word “play” to know that it is a key word in the book. As for the title, it was all in Univers since I didn’t want to stand out too much. I put Paul Rand’s book out of the box to let the reader know that he is important. The word “play” is further highlighted as I used a different color for it and in bold. To keep with the blue color scheme, I made sure everything was in blue in order to unify the design.
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