This semester's studio assignment was the good old ABC's with a twist. From day one, we were studying the Futura font (unfortunately not available in blogger . . . ) as first a geometrical image, and then as a shape from which to make extrusions, then buildings. It has sparked an interest for me (though some of my classmates might disagree) with letterform/typology. I am currently reading a book about fonts called "Just My Type" and taking a 5-session letterpress class, which ends tonight.
On the first day, we were each given two letters (mine were D and A) and the assignment of learning their geometry and making the two letters merge together in a way that makes a whole new shape where the original letters are hopefully less recognizable. We then extruded them 4" and thus began the great modeling session of our semester.
Over the following few weeks, we each made new models where three letters (mine were D, A, and F) were each extruded 10" in three different directions, the later models having the letters at different, non-orthogonal angles
, the last one even morphing in size. Each of these models was a section model, with the middle section cut covered in black paper, to make the new shapes that were created by the intersecting letters really stand out.
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| the first, most legible model |
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| the second, craziest-and-hardest-to-build, model |
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the third model, where each of the letters are getting smaller
or bigger, from one side to the other. |
What we learned throughout these first few weeks was more than just a study of geometry, but a study of patience, spending many (many) hours poring over bits of paper at our desks and finding the state-of-mind necessary to make each cut and each glueing more precise.
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| Jeff Kipnis, in his sea of letters |
Even though these were the first real study of the semester, when we brought them out at our final review, Jeff Kipnis thought they were the most compelling work of the series.
To be continued . . . .
