Typography Task3B : Creating Sticker

 

Type Design & Communication

28 May 2022  (Week 11 - 12)

Mabuchi ARATA / 0351579 
Typograohy / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Task 3B : Designing typeface

1, Lectures

From last week, we started the project to design about designing new stickers for each celebration. The project requires to start from analogue sketch to discover general ideas come up in your mind. I choose the event "Christmas" for my work to create sticker.Before I moved to the digital design, I made several different deign for sticker I am going to made to concrete ideas to develop as shown below.

As you can see, I have made several ideas to represent Christmas, however most of them doesn't match to the sticker requirement which requires to fill within square.

In the end, I decided to represent the Christman by using cristmas cake.

2, Production

First of all, I started to research about the design of christmas cake to understand about how the design of the cake should be.

As the result, I decided to create a image of christmas cake which uses white cream and strawberry as the image shown below.

Once I concrete idea for the task, I started to design the sticker of a cake, I've tried to use Adobe illustrator to create the image as shown below.

The point I had used my effort most in this phase was decoration for a cake, first of all, the order of the layer which shows cream and strawberry must be in the right order to look more realistic, firstly, I made the images of cake randomly, so the image of the top decoration was totally inacurate, so I tried to organize the order of the image of cream and strawberry to look them correct as real cake.

Secondaly, I struggle to think about the decoration for the to of the cake. In Japan, the Christmas cake has nice decoration suc as house, Santa Claus and so on, therefore I was also think carefully to design on the top of the Christmas cake. I decided to place holly plants with blueberry and miniature of Christmas tree. The reason for this is because when I take a look an image of Christmas tree from a distance, I realised that the colour used in the image is dull, therefore I choose greener colours so the image itself looks more interesting.

I added the image of Taylor's logo as the pin to put on the top of the cake. Thanksfullt of that the logo design of the Taylor's university is simple, it fit right into the cake itself.

After designing basic shape of the cake and top of the cake itself, I started to design side of the cake, as simple sketch shows. I also required to design the line to separate the text of "Merry Christmas" into two different lines. I had twodifferent ideas to design the side of Christmas cake, but Because of that I wanted to hae a bigger sized for the text "Merry Christmas", so I choose simpler and smaller line.

I had a design for stickers which is using either font provided in the Typography Faceboo page or font set I made before, however the sticker requires to fill in the images by using texts, therefore I needed to use illustrator to design the text used in the stickers too. I tried to represent the formal impression for Christmas sticker. therefore I refered to the rococo design which looks like natural elements floating and providing a formal impression because it can be seen in the Victorian furniture.

When I design the text of "Merry Christmas" for the side of the cake which is going to be the main part. There are about three problems I found for designing text by using Adove illustrator as shown below. :

・Size of text itself

・Thickness of the each characters

・Font style to be used

Firstly, I wanted to make every character on the sticker shaped in same size so we can easily read through the text and it says about celebrating Christmas, therefore I horizontally separate an image of a cake into equally half then makes simply to identify each characters of te text. For thesticker requirement, I needed to fill empty side of the image of cake, therefore I decided to use capital letter for each characters in the text so I can easily fill the image of the cake itself.

Secondaly, Thikness is the part where I concerned most. This is because it's required to fill in the text inside of the image of cae, however, if the image get too thick some part of character might get lost and it cause distorted, therefore I accept to remain the part of cake's image.

However, it doesn't mean that I left the empty space as empty, I tried to add some decoration to make the impression of the sticker much formal. I choose rococo design which its outlook looks like some natural elements such as plants or water floating.

After desiding the size of space and tickness for characters, I moved into the point of font, first of all, I've already decided to express the formal impression, this is because the chrismas was originally event for the Christianity, so it can be said that the event of Christmas was originally religious event, therefore I tried to represent some sort of formal impression. 

In the world of fonts there can be two different of fonts style (even through there are also one more additional font type exists, but to make it simple, let's keep the topic simple.), Serif and Non Serif font. Serif is basically the horizontal small line existing some of characters in  some sont as shown below.

As you may understand,  Serif font can provide us a formal impression, this is because the history of using serif for text has become over 5oo years. The long time usage of font style explains that the impression of serif, around 500 years ago, the printing system was invented and the numbers of printers had beed increased,, during that time, the printing system was invented, after the invention of the text printing system, many religious and cultural movement was happened, it led increasing of usage of the serif fonts and it's no wonder to help serf font to get a formal impression.

As I've been talking before, I used the formal font style to express formal impression of the Christmas. In the first time, I used the font set called "Bembo Std" or my own designed font to express formal impression as shown below.

Afer I was told that I need to fill the image itself by using text, I started to use pen tool to design my own design, however, I tried to remain main typography rules to provide formal impression from the sticker. As I said before, I left some white space to prevent the text get distorted.

The image may look perfect at once, but you may feel the image looks borning this is because beide the text itself, there's no decoration for the text, therefore I added two features for the texts.

・Light brown outline

・Additional decoration based on rococo design

First of all, I added light brown outline to make the text itself easy to read, even thought it already appeared as main visual elements of the sticker in big size, the colour I used in the text may be seemed as brinking in the white background, additionaly I felt the impression of the text looks bit dull, therefore I decided to add light beown coloured line as outline for the text "Merry Christmas" by the way, I designed the text of "Merry Christmas" as chocolate decolation for the cake, I planned to colour in more lighter brown as representing cokies, however when I use dark brown, lighter brown can't make good contrast that emphasis text itself. 

When I checked my sticker design, I feel weird and unconfortable to see the design even throug the total outlooks can be said as "there's no wrong design", I feel like strage feelings, the reason why I feel weird on my design is becasue there are empty space that is not eough to represent as one of the visual elements as shown below

The point is that because of that there are some empty places, the text's image Merry Christmas" is totally unbalanced and it caused the visual to be seen as "unstable" and weird expression, therefore, I decided to decorate the empty space based on rococo design.

When I look through the rococo design, I found that every rococo design is seemed that based on the natural elements such as plants or water, therfore I tried to popied this technique my the method shown below.

・Avoid straight line (To explain about this more specifically, the straight line should not used as main feature.)

・Try to make a part where the shape get separated.

・Keep in mind that the line is curved as it tries to form a circle.

During the decolation, I tried to keep this mind to make a decoration for the text to provide stable and formal impression.

My rococo based decoration can be categorized into two different groups. First of all, I used symmetrical visual balance for the character which is looks like linear symmetrical characters, these kind of characters tend to create empty space because they require space to form. I tried to fill the space by adding asymmetrically designed rococo styled shape to provide formal impression. The character "Y" which exist on the right hand side edge of upper part of the cake had much white space. It led the unbalanced impression for viewers, therefore I provided many rococo styled shape so the character "Y" gains more visual weight, as the result, the upper part of the image now got more visual weight and as the results, the upper part of the image looks more balanced than before.

Another type is the non linear assymetric design, it can be non symmetrical shape at all, or linear symmetrical shape, the reason for this is because I didn't duplicate images and change its shape to create shapes, I tried to use totally different shapes.

When I making rococo styled design, I focused not to distort each character's original shapes. Sometimes I've decorated characters too much, but it can lead the distortion of the characters and it causes lose  word's meanings, I tried to remain each character's original shapes without feeling weird. As the result, the text has been decorated without weird inpression or word's distortion to cause losing word's meaning, and finally I achieved to make the text much stable.

Additionary, I add the image of Santa Claus and reindeer to represent Christmas even better way, however, I added this as playfullness, even though it;s not necessary as part of Christmas cake, I thought it'd be nice to have small images of them to represent Christmas.

As the result, I finally completed to create Christmas sticker. As I repeatedly say that I was trying o express "formal" impression because Christmas was originally religious event for Christianity. I used Serif method and other typograpy method and rococo style to achieve my goal to express my visual idea. I hope the image of Christmas cake with chocolate decoration perfectly represents celebration for Christmas event.

3, Final Outcome

1, Smallest size

2, Biggest size

3, Sticker size

4, PDF form

5, Sticker link

https://t.me/addstickers/ChristmasCelebrationCake

4, Reading

Usually, I show only one book I found interesting and useful for my prodyuction, but because of this work takes long time and I was required to change design for text, I have two different books to represent in this E portfolio.

1, Typography Idea Book

First, I want to represent the book "Typography Idea book". This book provides many ideas related for the typography design. The book is formed by short sentences to explain about each typography ideas and visual examples. The explanation is very easy to get understand because the text isn't long and it explains about core consept of each typo style simply, this is why I choose this book as references.

When I read through this book, I found one interesting ideas about "Rococo" design, I loved idea when I read this book, this is why I choose Rococo style as my sticker's design.

2, Typography Idea Book

This book is about showing many ideas related to the logos, there are also some explanations about Logo with visual expressions. The book contains many different visual ideas about logos from companies or other brands that may be seen in different areas. The book is still useful even looking through only logos.

When I read through this book, I found one interesting ideas from book cover that uses fonts and visual design around text to express scary impression (unfortunatelly, I can't find the image from the book because of some problems....). I loved that ideas and I used the idea as references for my stucker design.

The point I regret about this book is that the book contains some explanations to develop ideas to create a logo. I think it'd be so much helpful if I had used sooner, therefore I want to use this book for for future production.