Type Mutilation Assignments (for your gagging pleasure)

So I don’t generally like to violate my type in the ways that my teacher encouraged and even required in order for us to get a good grade in his class. I did it anyway, even though I regret it. I am embarking on a journey to re-do each one of these assignments without the constraints that made them look so horrendous. I want them to look like they would fly in the real world, but that’s the “after” part of the story. Read on for the “before”

Assignment 1: Create a typeface

The guidelines here were to take one letter of the alphabet and create a serif, sans-serif and decorative version of the same type family. Each version had to have four weights – all distinctly different. I got a B because I didn’t “alter” my Q enough for the decorative version. I had a leafy idea that I didn’t have time to implement. I still have a sketch of what I wanted to do. Hopefully this time around I can have a more attractive face. The only feedback my teacher gave to students doing this assignment was little things like “a little more weight here” and “it’s too thick there” nothing that would apply to typeface design in the real world.

With my re-do of this assignment I will find guidelines from books. Most notably, I plan to check out Designing Type from the community college library. It talks about every single possible term, variable and consideration when designing type. I think that in my second go-round, I’ll also create the whole alphabet. How useful is one letter? I couldn’t actually use that Q for anything except maybe a monogram. And that’s only if my initials were Q.Q.Q.

Assignment 2 – Greeting Cards

For this assignment we were to create a greeting card using only type for three occasions with the exact text: “Happy Birthday” “Happy Anniversary” and “Get Well Soon.” Most of the kids who did well on this assignment did so by altering the actual copy, adding illustrations, or both. My teacher urged us to go out to the Hallmark store and look at real examples. Most real examples include photographs, artwork or illustrations.

The next time I take on the greeting card assignment I really am going to pay attention to reference of cards that are in stores and use the same techniques – illustration, stock photography in HARMONY with the type design to create an effective card.

Assignment 3 – Create a book cover

My original idea for this assignment was to create a book cover for a designer named Grace, a biography and a style guide for respecting type designers and creating elegant, readable text. My original sketch and draft was based on a layout shown in The Elements of Typographic Style, but my teacher asked me to create a “real” draft using Illustrator before he would give me any feedback. After that, my book was molested. Turning from elegant to busy and crude. I designed the whole jacket – here’s the front cover.

This time I will be allowed to use more than shapes. Illustrations are supposed to be part of a book design as well. Sometimes even photographs. I would like to do an existing story next time as well, so to have something to draw from.

Assignment 4 – Logotype

Since I happened to be working for someone who was in need of a logotype, I created one for that in addition to the assignment of creating two logos. TEd TV is currently in use in real life.

I think this assignment went alright, but since we weren’t really supposed to do existing companies, we didn’t really gain any starting points for creating a logotype. No history, background, or ideas to start from. It was all about which type we liked the best and that was all. The critique my teacher gave a lot of people was that they didn’t modify the type enough. I didn’t have to because the font I chose already looked distressed

Assignment 5 – T-shirt

For this assignment we were to create a t-shirt using only type for the design. My teacher allowed simple graphic elements like stars, swirls, and hot dog shapes, but generally he said we were not to use those. Only type. My original idea for a T-shirt was simply the word ‘beauty’ in distressed print with grungy shapes and flowers around it. I don’t think he would have bought the small amount of type and also when I got the assignment sheet, it said that the shirt had to advertise a person, place, band or company. Beauty is none of those things, so I decided to make DJ Beauty instead. Her boyfriend could be the Beast, or whatever.

This t-shirt, no matter how stupid or how much of a stretch that it would actually ever get used – Ever – still got me an A on the assignment.

Assignment 6 – Letterhead Design

Talk about giving the same assignments we would have in the real world! This assignment called for us to design a logo (for a fictitious business – but I decided to use my real business), and a set of business stationery for this company. We would have gotten points off for printing on plain white paper (which is what most businesses do to save money anyway). I chose a light purply-blue that matches the basic design of my logo. I had each piece slightly different in terms of the arrangement of all the other elements except the logo. In class he opened my file and copy-pasted one configuration, cloning it on all three pieces. This was the result:

Although I am currently using the logo design, I am never going to use any of these executions for my business stationery! They’re so average that it’s depressing. I guess that’s what you get from cramming in tons of assignments through the whole semester knowing that if you gave students time to give each assignment more thought, they wouldn’t do it and wouldn’t care anyway.

Assignment 7 – Outdoor sign

This assignment called for photographing an existing business sign (preferably a vintage sign) and “updating it” for the current time. I chose Color TV King:

This is what I changed it to:

My teacher also mentioned that it might be “cool” to emulate a vintage design. I cite Frost as a perfect example of this – modern and vintage at the same time. I started an idea I had for this already (still using the Color TV King sign) and I’ll post that as a later re-do of this assignment.

Assignment 8 – Packaging

For this assignment we were all presented with a pattern from which to make a tea box. The pattern was crooked and difficult to use, so I made my own. It was difficult to print because laid out flat, a tea box takes quite a lot of paper! The kid who got the most complements was the one who put a belly band around his box – mostly because it had a “nice” texture. I don’t have any photos of my box because it wasn’t there on the last day for me to pick up. In fact many of my assignments were not present in their printed, finished, mounted form, even though we were told we could pick everything up that day. I will show you:
The top of the box:

The Front of the Box:

and the back of the box:

This was the last assignment we did to molest our type. There were supposed to be 12 assignments total if I remember correctly, but when I asked my teacher about what assignments we didn’t do he mentioned only the print ad and the poster. I asked for a briefing on what those assignments were all about so that I could do them on my own time for practice. He said he might assign them in the design class (he was trying to get me to take that class. I’m not going to), or that he might give me credit for doing them in the design class. As if I need credit.

This is how much respect was shown to our assignments on the last day of class. One standard folding table held the coursework of four different classes. It was stacked up high and balanced delicately in some places. Some of it was not protected from scratches and damage from other works on the table. I specifically asked, and we were not supposed to mount our assignments with the usual piece of tracing paper over the top. Evidently, some other instructors did require that kind of mounting which is lucky for those kids. It wouldn’t be a big deal if it were somehow our fault that we weren’t getting our assignments back until the last class of the semester, but it wasn’t our fault. It was my teacher being too lazy to bring stuff to class and set it out on the table for us to pick up weekly. He wouldn’t even have to spend any class time trying to hand things out.

The grades were taped or written on each item with no time given to written feedback.

I will never take a class from this teacher again.