OUGD403 - Alphabet Soup: Shatter

At the end of looking at our researched letter forms in their categories we had to pick out a word from the randomiser, which would be our word for the task. From the word, we have to create 10 different letter forms which show this word in 10 different ways. The final 10 must be hand drawn and on a, individual 10X10cm piece of paper.

The word I got was 'Shatter'.

The first thing that comes into my head, naturally, was shattering glass etc, so I know it's going to be a challenge to get the word across in 10 different ways. Some will be more abstract than others, some simple and a couple probably completely off the mark but I suppose that's what it's all about.

An artist/designer I found: Friedhard Kiekeben. 

There was a whole body of work done on the concept of 'shatter'. I thought it was an interesting and different way to look at the subject. It's not the typical idea of shatter, but I can see how it works to show the word, and will definitely consider incorporating it into the development of my final 10.

I also looked at this series of images from Craig Ward, as it is a text which get's shattered. I might not be able to use much from it, but it'll be useful in the developing of the letters.

We must start with a ready-made typeface, so I decided on Times New Roman. I think it'll be a bit more interesting with the serifs and formal style than just a block letter like Helvetica or Arial.

I started with the simplest ideas for 'shatter' by cutting the letter into pieces.

This worked reasonably well and gave me two possible outcomes of how to present it - showing the lines and overlaps to make it look more in pieces, or just all black, which gives the same sort of effect but is a bit more abstract with the idea.

The second simple style was making the full letter form, but having just the boarder, the inside looking like it has been smashed like glass. As the task is keeping black and white, and quite simple, it makes it quite hard to make it work well without looking like cracked instead of smashed.

    

I did a few ideas on a sheet, experimenting with a couple of the different letters I'm going to use, and overall it was pretty successful, giving me at least six or seven different ideas for the final ones.

 I wanted to keep them quite simple, so decided to keep on the same sort of style for all of them. I want them to have a series/development but have their own individuality. To do this I photoshopped a few different ideas, keeping with the same concept and chose the better ones to be the final ten.

Final 10

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