Summer of Design - Project #2 - Photograph the alphabet

In the second of our Summer of Design projects we take a look at photography and typography. If you missed the first project take a look here.

Project #2 - PHOTOGRAPH THE ALPHABET

You will need - a camera, any camera - it doesn't have to be special!

Intro

Photography plays a big part in the designers life. Photography is often used to help communicate a mood and emotion. We can also use photography to help us record ideas and capture inspiration thought out our daily lives. So with this project we combine photography with typography. Typography is the study of letters, words and arranging them. We could go into this in much more depth but let's start of in simple terms... 

The project

As you go about your daily lives this week take a camera with you and try to capture every letter of the alphabet. Mix this up with making your own letters using various items you come across from stones, twigs or coins. Get your friends involved too!

Collate all your photos of letters and if you can, print them out and display them on a cork board or make a poster of the whole alphabet.

What are we learning here?

This project not only helps you notice everything around you, it also gives you a good introduction into letterforms and typography. You'll start to notice all the different typefaces and maybe start to think about how each typeface has it's own personality. 

Liked this project?

Why don't you try numbers next or extra symbols like ampersands(&) and pound signs? Another good photography project is to pick a colour and start snapping everything you see with that colour. This will come in useful for the next project #3 Interior Design.

If you have an interest to learn more about typography then you can get 40% off my Art of Typography Skillshare course by clicking on this link.

Modifications for younger children...

My son is almost 3 and doesn't know all the letters yet so this might be a tricky one for the really young children. What you can do is use it as an exercise to learn the letters... maybe focus on 1 or 2 at a time. One morning maybe you could set the challenge to find things around you that are S shaped, and take photos of them... for example. Or how about potato printing?! Or you can set a letter and try creating them out of different objects. My son loved helping me recently on the button alphabet... 

Keep updated

If you would like to be kept updated with the projects please like my facebook page and I'll be posting reminders there. I will also let you know what materials might be needed for the following weeks project.
Also if you would like to send me any of your projects to feature on my blog please email them to me hello@fayebrowndesigns.co.uk with the subject SUMMER OF DESIGN

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The Art of Typography - taster!

With just under 2 weeks to go until my online course The Art of Typography kicks off I thought I'd share a little taster of the course with you.

In the fourth unit - Creating your own typeface, we look at a variety of ways of designing your own typefaces from digital apps to hand drawn to using mixed media. But firstly I encourage the students to really understand letterforms and their structure - from stroke widths, weights, x-heights and style. A great way to start doing this is by 'copying' existing letters. I should say copying in design is not something I encourage in anyway share or form but this is slightly different!

So start by either printing out this alphabet sheet that uses a variety of typefaces or simply try drawing them by eye. 

Once you start really looking and taking the time to analyse letters you'll start understanding them more.

Above are some of my sketches. Don't worry if yours aren't quite so neat, this isn't a competition to see who can draw the neatest letters! Try to see shapes within the letters and how the stroke widths relate to different parts. Make any extra sketches to help you do this like I've done on the 'n' and 'v'

In the course we then go on to create our very own letters and typefaces. To find out more information on the course please follow this link. And if you think you'd like to enrol use discount code ALPHA for 15% off. The course will be online forever from the 14th June and I'll be giving feedback during the first 3 weeks of it's launch. Hope you can join in the fun!