This assignment was the very first project in my Intro to Digital Design course (ART 106-200). This assignment required the experimentation of the type tool in Illustrator. The first draft involved the selection of one letter and my desired font to create 4 different designs using that letter. My draft was submitted for feedback, and based on feedback, my final draft involved my strongest design displayed in both color and black and white.
First Draft
What was my process?
I chose the letter “r” for my type pattern. There was really no particular reason why I selected it, other than the fact that I liked how it looked with a cursive font in lowercase. I selected two different fonts for this assignment because I wanted to change it up a bit. The top row of my document is using the American Typewriter Condensed Light font, and the bottow row is using the Savoye LET Plain: 1.0. With the American Typewriter font, I liked how the serif looked on the letter and I chose the Condensed Light option, because it gave my letter a more sophisticated look. I chose the Savoye LET Plain: 1.0 because I thought I could be a little more creative with the cursive look.
My strongest design I would say is the bottom left, because the letter looks more concealed and artsy as opposed to the other designs. In the other designs you can see more easily what letter was used. My weakest design I would say is my first one (top left) since that is the first one I experimented with and wanted to keep it simple.
Final Draft
For my final draft, I ended up going with my bottom left design template. Because my initial design lined up so well with the next one in the pattern, I just kept the layout as is, with no adjustments. Just laying out my design in straight rows really looked nice and provided a nice pattern even in its black and white state.
My concept behind the color type pattern came from the recent celebration of the Juneteenth holiday. I thought it would really be cool to represent the holiday and the colors that represent the Pan-African flag of Green, Red, and Black (while some flags have yellow too). I decided to add the yellow since I have four letters per square.