A to Z Typology Poster

Task

To create an A2 typology poster, describing an alphabet of visual images relating to a chosen theme.

Before I'd even begun developing ideas for this task, I was reminded of Oliver Jeffers's 'Once Upon An Alphabet'. 

[Source]

Featuring a similar 'A-Z' theme to that of our brief, Jeffers used his visual alphabet to construct an imaginative and playful story. Jeffers is an author as well as an illustrator and I think that this book in particular demonstrates how he fuses these two art forms in order to create exciting narratives and characters for children.

Jeffers has a recognisable style in both his hand lettering and his simplistic drawings.

I'd be interested to know how much thought went into his idea generation for this project and what other solutions he considered.

I'd like to include some sort of narrative within my solution to this brief, but the format of a poster may not allow for such detail and rely more heavily on visual information than written dialogue.

Pictures can tell stories without words.

Idea Generation

 

I began to draft ideas by drawing things that are quite personal: things I like, things I hate. Little collections of opinions.

Above is a page of sketches related to the theme 'things I hate about the seaside'.

I enjoyed drawing these pictures and think that they are really quite fun and attractive in their cartoon style, but I don't think that this was a very strong concept. The fact that I dislike something doesn't mean that other people will too, and they wouldn't necessarily want to purchase a poster of these things. The characters are cheerful and jolly, not something that anyone should hate. 

I'll keep my miserable mutterings to myself.

More things that I enjoy to draw and think about: witchcraft and magic. Quite a trendy topic currently in regards to culture and fashion (witchy is IN), especially to my intended audience of my young and hip art student peers. I think that this theme would allow me to get quite inventive with media, exploring practical methods of applying colour, for example, that relate back to the witchcraft topic - splatting paint, mixing dyes and using a 'wand' to paint with,

This project has become an exploration of hypernyms and hyponyms.

I've been thinking about collections of words and 'things', but these collections don't actually say anything as a whole. I want to push my work to make an impression on the viewer, whether that be making them laugh or moving them emotionally.

The poster as a WHOLE... visualising the poster as a final outcome helped me to conjure up some more thoughtful presentations of 'collections' that would resonate with a reader.

The collection might be situated within a house, and therefore the poster is presented as a cross-section of a home. The picture tells a story of the lives within the house and who these possessions belong to.

The poster might be displayed as a map, documenting a story FROM A TO B, showing a journey and a path directed across the paper.

Tone of voice: I tried to alter my slant on the theme by choosing a different tone of voice. 

I'm not a funny person, so I struggled with humour at first, finding my solutions crude and silly.

Eventually, I found humour through the form of character. 

Someone who most people can identify from a mile because of his daring outfits and notable personas throughout his career, David Bowie. I tried to visualise his lifetime of stage names and musical variations into a collection of characters.

Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust being two of his most popular egos, before doing any research at all I already had an obvious letter 'A' and 'Z'.

I made popular icon Morrissey into a character and documented his wild and flamboyant dance moves as visual images. 

His eyebrows gained quite a lot of comments in the peer review at the end of today's session, apparently they are very emotive!

I shared my work with Siobhan and we reviewed each other's ideas. She had made a brilliant start to exploring very personal thoughts and translating these into visual images. I especially liked her alphabetic anxiety concept and encouraged her to continue producing work that 

resonates with the human race.

Siobhan enjoyed my humorous work and suggested ways in which I could make the character recognisable. More research! Get reference photos and learn more about the way that Morrissey moves or how Bowie has ch-ch-ch-changed!