OUDG403 - Alphabet Soup Interim Crit

This was my first experience of a crit and I found it really helpful. I presented 7 ideas to my group and also had some ideas that I haven't experimented with yet. I got some really useful feedback and ways that I could expand my ideas.

I have experimented with ideas around hybrids, as animal-human hybrids are something that is classed as grotesque. I used this idea to take the two opposites of type - serif and sans-serif and combined them.

People really liked this idea and said that I could expand on it by making it more uncomfortable to look at, for example making the serifs really distorted and changing the structure of the typeface. My goal with this type of idea is to create something that makes graphic designers feel uncomfortable. I think I will use this feedback and apply it to more ideas in general, and try to mess with the structure of the letters more, as most of my ideas have been more decorative rather than altering the actual typeface. 

Continuing with the uncomfortable theme, I have tried to make some of my letters quite hard to read. I am not very happy with any of the ideas on this page but I was encouraged by my peers to carry on with this idea and try and make something that I'm happy with that works with my word.

Another idea that I have had is quite an obvious one, where I have tried to make people feel uncomfortable and disgusted. I have called it "eyeball skewers" and the title speaks for its self. This idea reminds me a lot of Halloween, and I think that it is quite traditionally grotesque. People liked this idea and how it wasn't as closely linked to Futura as my other typefaces have been. They said I should further this idea by looking at colour and making it on other mediums such as on a computer.

I have also tried to make something that looks gooey and squishy and like it looks as though it is encasing the letter. I think that this looks quite grotesque but I need to look at colour because some people said it looks like ice-cream or clouds.

I am also going to look into gothic architecture (I have done some rough ideas already), and experiment with features of that to make different letterforms, such as gargoyles. I could take the different body-parts of them, such as wings and clawed feet to make the letterforms.

I also want to look into circus freaks (inspired by American Horror Story Freakshow), as I feel that they are very misunderstood, but are still classed as monsters, just because they are different. I would like to experiment with this idea and make it into a more subtle change of the typeface rather than it being decorative.

I am going to create an even mixture of ideas of decorative type and ideas where I am actually changing the structure of the type, as I feel I can have a more varied response to this brief and chose the right outcome to progress. Some other useful feedback that I have been given is to look at what fears people have, and use that to create a grotesque typeface that relates to people, and actually makes them feel something, as opposed to just looking at it and deciding whether they like it or not.