Type and Tape

Today was an absolutely amazing workshop. Sally only gave us a verbal brief and it was simply to design a new typeface using only tape. Of course the tape ranged from heavy duty, thick black duct tape to your average normal industrial sized masking tape. Oh and throw in some small rolls of yellow, white and stripy tape in too.

At first i think everybody was a bit skeptical about the project. I, myself, didn't think that it would be that amazing of a task but god was i wrong. At first we were sorted into groups and then told to just go off; brainstorm, research, look for inspiration, the whole sha-bang.

Firstly what my group decided to do was to each develop a typeface with our selected roll of tape and see where we'll go from there. To be honest i didn't feel like there was much of an inspirational vibe, everybody was just content with what they were doing and i felt like we should have been bouncing ideas off one another to get this project really going.

Eventually we ventured out to the great outdoors and somehow (don't really know) we got to the idea that maybe we could implement windows and shadows into our typeface. Once back in the room we stuck the tape onto the windows in the shape of the letters which was a more complexing task than i thought. It had to go upside down and back to front, something that really made my brain hurt.

Very quickly though we noticed a slight hiccup in our idea. The sunlight. As we frantically struggling to form the letters on the window the sun was slowly but quickly moving towards the middle of the sky to eventually leave us with absolutely no hope of casting shadows onto the work surfaces. My group pondered for a way to overcome this obstacle and that's when perspex was involved. The plan was foolproof.

And indeed it was.

The letters were put onto the sheet of perspex and a name was thought up for our typeface; Lumine. As it is latin for 'Light' which is very fitting. We ended up taking pictures both outside and inside where we used light to cast a shadow through the perspex which obviously showed the word 'Lumine'.

Overall i think the project was a major success. The team i worked with were people i didn't really talk to in class but this task has gently pushed me to make an effort to talk to them. The beginning was a rather slow start but as a team i think we quickly inspired each other and suggested ideas and comments to each other which made our typeface the success it was today. It was all about team skills and knowing how to listen to each other and take on board both comments and maybe some criticism about certain ideas. Today has totally made me look at type in a different light now. Before i wasn't too interested in the topic but now it seems that type can actually be fun and interesting.