Type Specimen Development

Development and Ideas 

I have struggled a lot when coming to terms with the format that my type specimen should be. My original idea was a poster but I was having a very difficult time with that. The scale, technique and actual design was really challenging me and I thought that I could not go further with it. The entire time that I was struggling with the poster, I kept thinking that I wanted to do a booklet, and that it would be so much easier to convey motion within this format. I started off really strong with the booklet design, or so I thought. One of the biggest design elements of my type specimen is the perspective angle at which it is tilted. The booklet design was the complete wrong shape for the tilted elements to fit on the page. Thus, this idea turned out to be a disaster.

Roll on my third attempt at a successful type specimen - the second poster. I was inspired by Francois Chastanet's poster design that I found on instagram. I think that the idea behind this was to display how the A4 piece of paper can be like a building block for bigger things. I love that he has not trimmed the edged - it really drives this message home. He says that the poster has a DIY, modular facade.

It got me thinking about how I can be inspired by this in terms of my own theme. I would love to create my specimen so that it overlapped across the pages, and then when it comes to sticking it up, is can be re-arranged or positioned in any pattern possible. In terms of motion, the idea has endless opportunities. So, I came up with the simple design below. 

Main points from crit:

• The last page containing the poster designs needs to be angled in the same way all the others has. 
• Needs some colour - this will be implemented through the use of coloured paper in the final version. 
• The design is consumed by the negative space. I need to find a way to bulk it up a bit so it doesn't look minimalist to a default. This could be making the content bigger so it doesn't look dominated or spreading it across more pages. 
• The rational should be further down the poster to create more balance throughout. 
• Try to shorten the rationale. Take out bits that are not important / really descriptive. 
• Try adding a wider margin to the design. 

I think that the design could be improved using the points that people in the crit mentioned. There is a lot of white space and I need to figure out a way to fill this while still abiding by the rules I created for myself.