FMP (BA): Train Journey Home

Critical & Reflective Thinking

I was on a long train journey home when I started to think about my projects. I had taken a couple of days break from design work because I felt that I was getting a bit claustrophobic and was starting to panic about my abilities as a lettering artist.

Nevertheless that train journey really helped in a number of ways.

Dr. Seuss

The first thing I thought about was my Dr. Seuss design and how my mum and some of my colleagues commented that it was a bit crowded. I thought, "Okay, I might just shift it around" but as I continued to think about it I realised that it was the hat itself that was making everything crowded. Using the technique of redundancy I thought of taking the hat completely out of the picture and just concentrate on the letters itself.

As soon as I got home I quickly drafted out a new layout for the letters as I'm hoping to just use what I had already done and then just changed it around slightly. 

New version

Apart from the fact that the old design was a bit crowded, my other reason was that it was too Dr. Seuss-y, it was way too obvious so instead of shoving it in people's faces shouting "LOOK IT'S INSPIRED BY DR. SEUSS" I could just do it subtly and use his signature colours to make it recognisable. 

Nelson Mandela

Once I wrote about my thoughts on Dr. Seuss in my phone I then thought about my Nelson Mandela piece because I really struggled with that. Sure enough, the break really did help because I immediately had lots of ideas bouncing around my head and my strongest one was the Mandela & de Klerk's handshake. I wrote this down and also sketched some ideas as soon as I got home.

I found the first sketch a bit too romantic so I moved on from this idea and drew the handshake, but even then I wasn't sure. If I did the idea with the ribbon around the hands then the words would be really difficult to write, and this probably wouldn't work on a square-ish page because the arms would be too wide. The first one was better because it would easily fit within my page dimensions.

This was when I thought back to Mandela & de Klerk's handshake and just turned the first handshake upside down and that's it, that's where I had my idea. It really linked in to Mandela because this handshake took place right after he was released and it spread worldwide. 

Later on I'll hopefully work on this first just to get it done. I want to use ink or biro because of that painting he had done with the inked-in hand, so it would be nice to produce something that linked to his own work. 

Tsunami Tides

I really liked the way my Tsunami Tides piece turned out but because they were lyrics from a song I really didn't know what to do with it. It could be a part of literature because the lyrics could be printed out in a book but... I wasn't too sure.

Instead I thought of another quote that was quite similar but it was also by John Green and I had already done something with one of his quotes. Anyway, his quote was from his book Searching for Alaska and it was, "So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane." However this quote is really, really, long, so it might not work as well.

I talked with my lecturer the next day about it and he suggested that I still used it but take away the wave and replace it with Ed Sheeran's name. As I'm still unsure I think I'll leave it to the last minute if I'm unable to produce at least 4 quotes.

Learning Outcomes:
[3] Developed written and oral skills of critical self-evaluation in relation to their design practice.
[6] Developed skills of critical thinking, analysis and evaluation.