Studio Brief 02 - Evaluation

This brief was harder overall, in my opinion, compared to Studio Brief 01. I felt that I was at a struggle to come up with ideas that were appropriate for my given word. I had no experience in designing a typeface prior so I was at a loss for a starting point. As compared to Studio Brief 01, majority of my efforts was directed towards the research which did help me in generating my ideas. By researching on Müller-Brockmann, contextual applications and other typeface designs, it helped me gain perspective of how already established typefaces such as Bella and Eksell Stencil convey the word mysterious. From doing research I have a range of sources of which I can take inspiration from and thus implement into my own work. It puts in perspective how much research can be a help to a project, I should expand on this and research even more for my next Brief. However despite this I was still unsure of my typeface design during the developmental stages. I found it challenging to create a visually appealing typeface at same time communicate the idea of mysterious. I found it hard to make the typeface convey the meaning of mysterious itself. Typefaces are meant to convey a message and information to the audience it clashes with the unknown of mystery. So the issue was trying to get a typeface to say something without saying anything. What did help me in streamlining my ideas was getting feedback. By getting a range of comments and work it allows me to see the typeface from a different perspective and broadens my range of designs. Another aspect that also helped in progressing my typeface was to place it onto context. I saw the benefit of this from my applications in Studio Brief 01 and felt that it could help me better adjust the design elements to suit the possible platforms.
Finally are my thoughts on how I carried out my final critique.There still needs to be an improvement in how I communicate my ideas visually. I should have included a manifesto within my presentation to help the reader understand what I was trying to achieve with my typeface. Furthermore due to my uncertainties regarding my typeface design, I should have displayed my older designs to see which one in their opinion worked better. I think i was too concentrated on the idea of partiality instead of subtly playing on that notion while still retaining ambiguity. Because after reading the summative feedback and looking back at my initial ideas, I realised that the older designs may have been a better iteration of what the typeface should have been because it is more legible. Despite these feelings I still remain confident that Myst communicates mystery. The final designs display my research and work well on the given contexts.