FMP (BA): Lettering Exercise - "It Always Seems Impossible Until It's Done"

The Final Piece

The Process

I went along to experiment with Nelson Mandela's quote "It always seems impossible until it's done." I really wanted to try something similar to the papercut style, but as I don't have the materials just yet I first focused on the design. 

I started like I always do with quotes, by figuring out what kind of layout I wanted. This is normally the hardest part for me because it was the most important. I didn't want it too be too cluttered or spaced out so I took my time with this. I also wrote a new list of inspiration and connotations just in case I wanted to incorporate some illustrations into it.

With some notes written down I had a look on Google at several images of birds in flight, highlighted three and put my illustrations and the type together. The reason why I went for the birds idea was that I wanted it to symbolise Nelson Mandela's freedom and the fact that there's always a positive end to life, so we could just "fly away" from our troubles.

With my final sketch done I could now work on my first design, drawing out my boundaries before laying down some guides of where I was going to write my type. I then wrote in the type before roughly sketching the birds.

Once I was satisfied with the layout of the birds I went into more detail before going around everything with a micron pen. That's when I realised I hadn't included Nelson Mandela's name, so I quickly included that in. 

Then I scanned in my document and made some final touches to it in Photoshop.

Looking at it I feel that it is rather plain and would look so much better if there were more birds around it or with a background colour. I'm not too sure how I'm going to get rid of the black lines so that I'm left with a white shape, so I shall figure that out tomorrow when I decide what other elements to add to the illustration.

The Next Day... 

Okay so when I looked at my design again in the next morning the first thing I did was print what I had from the computer and then draw some more birds around it. I can never be sure what it would look like if I don't try it out, so I was going to take this design step-by-step. I wrote some notes in my sketchpad as I went along.

When I looked at my newer design I realised that I really wanted to try out the papercut design because I was so inspired by what I found before. I thus uploaded it on Photoshop and made a few subtle corrections such as erasing the overlapping areas as well as neatening up Nelson Mandela's name as it was really hard to read when it was printed out.

Here are some screenshots of the different effects that I went for. I was aiming to get that 'papercut' design appearance so when I was really pleased when I found a way to do it. 

First row - In the first row I was mainly experimenting with colour and whether or not to have a background colour or just stick with black and white. I noticed that my line drawing - the black and white version - resembled one of my past designs so I decided to go with having a blue background to reflect the sky.

Middle row - Here is when I figured out how to achieve that papercut style; what I did was use the magic wand tool to delete all areas apart from within the type and birds, then put a new background layer beneath it. By locking the birds & type layer I then used the paintbrush tool and coloured in the locked areas to get what you see in the first picture on that row. This is because it also colours the outline in white. 

I then tried out different opacities but I quite liked the papercut style without black lines.

Last row - Here I went to Blending Options to see what would happen if I added a slight drop shadow to my design and played around with different values. I realised that even though I do like it with a lot a shadow it was a bit too much and hid some of the letters. 

Then I printed out my chosen design for a test print, stuck it in my book, and showed it to my classmates and lecturers. 

Critical Thinking - Feedback: 
Even though some of my classmates liked it I wasn't too sure about my design so I showed it to my lecturers, and they mentioned that I should research into Nelson Mandela's life story so that I could produce something that would link to him personally rather than just briefly touch the surface of the freedom he gave to the people of South Africa. 
This made me realise that I haven't been delving into the actual person as much as I usually do, so I shall take their feedback into account and look at his biography then start over. 

I wrote all of my feedback around my design in my sketchpad, and it includes everything that I said above. There were some other things like trying out thinner handwriting, perhaps even mimicking Nelson Mandela's handwriting so it's as if he's writing to whoever is reading it.

Reflective Thinking - Summary

It was a really nice exercise and even though it was my first time doing this kind of style I really enjoyed it because I used my previous knowledge on how to draw silhouettes from a past project. However, it didn't really suit the message of the quote and what Nelson Mandela was all about so even though the technique was good, it wasn't good for this quote.

What I should've done is analysed Nelson Mandela a bit more than jumped straight into designing a quote. I guess it's because I'm worried that I'm running out of time so my main focus is to do as many designs as possible without thinking of the connotations behind them. This means that I might have to go back to my "old ways"; completely take apart each quote until I understand it and then produce a good design for it.

This type of technique would however work for a message that's "lighter" and perhaps less deep as this quote. I could see myself using it for a quote from a romance novel but perhaps not something political. This makes me question why the other designer that I looked at in my research used this sort of technique for Abraham Lincoln... Something that I didn't really think about before.

At least I now know how to produce something to look like papercut design! If I do choose to do it again then the process would be a lot easier, and I wouldn't necessarily have to cut it out... It's kind of "cheating", but at least I can achieve the same effect.

My next step is to now go back and look at his biography, figure out when he said the quote as well as find out where he managed to write all of the stuff he has written. 

Learning Outcomes:

[2] Developed a high level of intellectual and conceptual involvement with their chosen subject area, including skills of project proposal, documentation of project development and the presentation of outcomes.

[5] Developed skills of independent study, resource utilisation, problem-solving and decision-taking.

[7] Developed their ability to learn through reflection on practice and experience.