The Typographic Dream State

SAND

Sand is a very fine rock. Like water, it is very fluid. It is easily shaped into various forms and easily moved by wind or an external force. Sand is like a dream. It can be easily shaped, but easily disturbed. In European fairy-tales, the Sandman sprinkles sand into children’s eyes to bring them dreams.

Emotion: uncertainty, curiosity, acceptance, serenity

WOOD + THUMB TACKS

I made small holes in a wooden board with thumb tacks and a hammer. Small holes look disorderly up close but more orderly far away. The process of making many holes to form a letter may be tedious, but when you are done you see the finished work. In a dream, we may be confused, but when we wake up and think back to the dream, we could understand better what it means.

Emotion: anticipation, acceptance, serenity, amazement

TRACING PAPER

Objects can become clear or blurred with distance through tracing paper. Sometimes, the feeling is very similar to dreams. It conveys a special romance between clarity and fuzziness. The random movement of objects behind the tracing paper makes people feel curious, dreamy, but could also even communicate the feeling of worry and uncertainty.

Emotion: curiosity, worry, shyness.

NATURAL ELEMENTS

Flowers or leaves belong to natural elements and are the most familiar and harmless objects to people. Whether in dreams or reality, nature always can affect our emotions and feelings. Close contact with nature is easy to bring peace and even pleasant feelings.

Emotion: hope, love, serenity.

OBJECTS

I cut out the letter, and put paper with different letter on several items. A can be apple, G is green, and letter F is flowers.

Emotion: love, beauty, serenity.

LED LIGHT

I wonder if the letters will produce different emotions and feelings like people because of the change of the color of the environment. I tried to use LED light to test and confirm this view. The color change of the environment will also bring different feelings to the letters.

Feeling: courageous, strong, impulsive, bold.

LED LIGHT 2

I tried to capture the moment when the letters fell with my camera. The state of letter movement gives me an unpredictable and lively feeling. Also, the LED light bring a dramatic effect and atmosphere to the whole image.

Feeling: playful, liberated, frisky, lively.

PAPER & LAMP

I tried bending the paper to form a column and then looking inside from side, all the words formed a unique depth in the paper that making me feel like I was being pulled to the other end.

Feeling: vertiginous, curious, enthusiastic.

WATER & INK

I tried to play with the fluidity of water. The ripples of water can bring a soft and clear feeling to the image. After adding ink, flowing texture is formed randomly, it brings me a comforting and dreamy feeling. Feeling: peaceful, soft, gentle, flowing, free.

WATER & INK 2

I put the words and ink into the water one after another. The paper words float on the water, and the ink sinks to the bottom of the container. The random movement of ink and water looks casual and relaxed. Also, the random floating of letters on the water brings a lively feeling to the whole, which is very attractive.

Feeling: passionate, attracted, accepting, mysterious.

THREAD + NEEDLE

Concept: Seeing the clues that signal danger..

Feeling: mysterious, terrified, tense

IRON POT

Concept: Being driven into a corner by pressure and fear, with nowhere to hide.

Feeling: isolated, uneasy, anxious

SAND

Concept: The feeling of being submerged.

Feeling: hopeless, scared, distressed

THREAD

Concept: Whatever fate is predesignated will eventually come to pass.

Feeling: doomed, helpless, trapped

NAILS + THREAD

Concept: Building a world/word/web like the spider.

“Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.”

—Charles Addams

Feeling: tangled, creepy, prepared

INK

Concept: The feeling of being chased and hurt.

Feeling: horrible, scared, tense

MOVIE 1 : THE ADDAMS FAMILY

Fantasy

The Addams Family steps out of Charles Addams’ cartoons. They live with all of the trappings of the macabre (including a detached hand for a servant) and are quite wealthy. Added to this mix is a crooked accountant and his loan shark and a plot to slip the shark’s son into the family as their long-lost Uncle Fester. Can the false Fester find his way into the vault before he is discovered?

—John Vogel

A TIGHT FAMILY

Each family member represents a nail. The thread connects them together. As long as one member is missing, it is not a complete Addams Family. They are looking peculiar and creepy. They are a gloomy and odd family, but they have a kind innocence that is more precious than many ordinary people.

MOVIE 2 : CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

Drama/Romance Academy Award for Best Writing

(Adapted Screenplay)

Call me by your name, the film by Luca Guadagnino, is a sensual and transcendent tale of first love, based on the acclaimed novel by André Aciman.

It’s the summer of 1983 in the north of Italy, and precocious 17-year-old Elio Perlman is spending the days with his family at their 17th-century villa in Lombardy, Italy. He soon meets Oliver, a handsome doctoral student who’s working as an intern for Elio’s father. Amid the sun-drenched splendor of their surroundings, Elio

and Oliver discover the heady beauty of awakening desire over the course of a summer that will alter their lives forever.

“It’s progressive in its appropriately admiring depiction of a loving and erotic relationship between two young men. They’re the most tacit of friends and the most silent of lovers.” —Richard Brody

1 : BLURRY LOVE

In 1983, homosexual love was not accepted by most people. We see the two characters in the movie, just as we see the letters separated by paper. The random movement of letters behind the paper conveys a special romance between clarity and fuzziness, giving us a feeling that we can’t touch, but we care about and are curious. Still, we feel worry and uncertainty.

2 : FLOWING LOVE

The faint letters represent the love of the characters in the movie. The font is not written, but dyed with ink. Like the ink they attract and bond with each other, and the love (the letters) is clear at the end.

3 : INTERTWINED LOVE

The random movement of ink and water looks intertwined and entangled. Also, the random floating of letters on the water brings a lively feeling on the whole, which is very attractive, just like their love in the movie.

MOVIE 3 : CORALINE

Animation/Drama

When Coraline moves to an old house, she feels bored and neglected by her parents. She finds a hidden door with a bricked up passage. During the night, she crosses the passage and finds a parallel world where everybody has buttons instead of eyes, with caring parents and all her dreams coming true. When the Other Mother invites Coraline to stay in her world forever, the girl refuses and finds that the alternate reality where she is trapped is only a trick to lure her.

A DANGEROUS SIGNAL

In the film, the evil mother from the other world tries to sew buttons into Coraline’s eyes to keep her around forever. Thread and buttons are signals of danger in the movies. I will use these two elements to create fonts to express the sense of crisis and the feeling of tension.

PART THREE

MOVIE SELECTION AND FINAL POSTERS

MOVIE SELECTION : CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

TYPE

I first wrote down the name of the film on the paper with water, and then dropped ink into the water. After the ink and water dried, I took pictures, and then turned the type to digital in Illustrator so that I could edit and modify the color.

POSTERS : SERIES 1

ARMIE HAMMER TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET MICHAEL BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN

A

ARMIE HAMMER TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET MICHAEL STUHLBARG AMIRA CASAR ESTHER GARREL BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN SCREENPLAY BY JAMES IVORY

GUADAGNINO

MICHAEL STUHLBARG AMIRA CASAR ESTHER GARREL ACIMAN SCREENPLAY BY JAMES IVORY

ARMIE HAMMER TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET MICHAEL STUHLBARG AMIRA CASAR ESTHER GARREL BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN SCREENPLAY BY JAMES IVORY

POSTERS : SERIES 2

ARMIE HAMMER TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET MICHAEL STUHLBARG AMIRA CASAR ESTHER GARREL BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN SCREENPLAY BY JAMES IVORY

A FILM BY LUCA GUADAGNINO

ARMIE HAMMER TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET MICHAEL BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN

A FILM BY LUCA GUADAGNINO

ARMIE HAMMER TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET MICHAEL STUHLBARG AMIRA CASAR ESTHER GARREL BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN SCREENPLAY BY JAMES IVORY

A FILM BY LUCA GUADAGNINO

MICHAEL STUHLBARG AMIRA CASAR ESTHER GARREL ACIMAN SCREENPLAY BY JAMES IVORY

CALL ME by YOUR NAME

“He came. He left. Nothing else had changed. I had not changed. The world hadn’t changed. Yet nothing would be the same. All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.”

HAMMER TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET MICHAEL BASED ON

ARMIE HAMMER TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET MICHAEL STUHLBARG AMIRA CASAR ESTHER GARREL BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN SCREENPLAY BY JAMES IVORY

A FILM BY LUCA GUADAGNINO

and I'll call you by mine.”

ME by NAME

GUADAGNINO

CALL ME by YOUR NAME

“The Cosmic Fragments by Heraclitus: The meaning of the river flowing is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice, but that some things stay the same only by changing.”

MICHAEL STUHLBARG AMIRA CASAR ESTHER GARREL ACIMAN SCREENPLAY BY JAMES IVORY

ARMIE HAMMER TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET MICHAEL STUHLBARG AMIRA CASAR ESTHER GARREL BASED ON THE NOVEL BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN SCREENPLAY BY JAMES IVORY

A FILM BY LUCA GUADAGNINO

IDEAS | PHOTOGRAPHY | DESIGN : YU LIU

INSTRUCTOR : DAVID HAKE

GR 613 TYPE EXPERIMENTS