Neville Brody

British designer and art director, Neville Brody, has been a prominent figure in graphic design for over twenty years. These examples, nominated in the D&AD awards 2004, I respect greatly. The type takes on a challenging yet balanced form on the page, and I believe the overall layout is superb. Information is ordered in an imaginary hierachy of importance, highlighted with perhaps a larger or heavier weighted type. Brody has integrated words and images incredibily well, by featuring a teasing snapshot from the main text alongside sillouhettes in the photographs.

David Carson

David Carson's work is also very inspiring for me. He boldly experiments with text orientation and legibility to create beautiful page constructions that are so great to look at, before you even begin extracting the information from them.






"David Carson continues to be one of the world's most distinctive typographic voices much imitated, but never matched,"_ Ellen Lupton, ID MAG judge, june 2005

Wim Crouwell

We witness many attempts of poorly designed futuristic typefaces, whereas Crouwell's prove that he has ventured on a different thought process. His carefully considered shaped letters have a fresh appearance that separates from others, and they could be applied in a variety of ways. Having designed a typeface of a similar style for the recent 'Flatland' project, I appreciate and respect his guts in his approach. I found it difficult to push the boundaries of legibility and felt compelled to make my design snugly fit into the 'sci-fi' image of futuristic typefaces. Crouwell's work doesn't have to be pigeon-holed so sharply.

Stephen Farrell : An Opera In Flatland

I have selected a small example of Farrell's design work here as I wish to highlight the beauty of these book pages. The artistic sketchbook style typesetting featured has a very pure and emotionless feel. They are beautiful for their simplicity.

TR_Start Creative, Martin Muir

Start Creative has worked with multinational comapnies such as Virgin Mobile. Virgin has a very striking corporate image that is different to other phone companies. This was an important part of the brief for Start as Virgin relies on it's media presence for success, as it has a very low profile on the high street. Start created a set of typefaces for the Virgin team to use on their own, this was a method of ensuring that the same brand expression was used in all features of design work.


"Using the simplest of techniques, type on paper, the manual inspires the Virgin workforce to think differently, take risks and be decisive."

TR_Norman Foster Works

This is an example of simple page layout for book design. Norman Foster's architectural work required a low key presentation so that there is no distraction from the visuals in the book, the most important piece of information and the purpose of the issue is to display his work. This is acheived by using a white background with light weight sanserif type to caption the images.

TR_Volkswagen Phaeton

www.thephaeton.co.uk/universe/index.php
This website is a good example of a succesful interaction with text and images. The white vectors creating the background link together the different aspects of the presentation, to create a whole and complete image to the viewer. Within the text, important words are highlighted as links to lead through to a different part of the site. The type used is discreetly futuristic, without appearing as though its been on a journey in Doctor Who's time travel machine. When you pass the cursor over the image, individual boxes appear with information about that part of the picture. Overall, I found this site very easy to use with a playful way of accessing information about this new car from Volkswagen.

Level Two Typo Project

"Typeset Shakespeare's Sonnet Eighteen in an appropriate font and layout with particular attention given to leading, kerning, and letter spacing. No fancy tricks, just beautiful composition. Think about the meter of these words, their subject and the voicing you intend the reader to perceive as they read."

I began my composition using 'Georgia Italic', reversed out in white on a mid-grey background. I altered the leading to 18pt as the body of text needed a lot more space in order to be read gracefully and slowly, as a Sonnet should. Before I changed the leading the tightness meant that a reader would be more inclined to travel at high pace through the Sonnet as though it was unimportant newsprint. A sonnet deserves consideration of its delicacy and meaning.

Eventually I progressed to using 'Adobe Jenson Pro', which I feel has a much more beautiful and precious style. It has greater legibility than any other type I used. I decided to abandon the grey box as it was an unecessary and confusing part of the composition that could not be justified. Setting the text with a right alignment in 12pt, and leading at 14pt was my final decision, positioned at the foot of the page in an overall central position.

MY PLAYTHING - Volleyball Match Analysis Animation

I aim to create a three dimensional model of a volleyball match that can be animated in flash. It will display the on court position of the points scored in a sample match, and their increasing frequencies. This will enable post match analysis for coaches and teams to determine where their weak points and strong points are with regards to conceding and scoring points. A key system will be displayed at the start to indicate the value of each different sized cone.



Once this general model is created I would envisage the flash file to become interactive, so it could represent an infinite variety of matches. With data recorded by a match analyser entered into a data input screen prior to the flash file loading, each individual game can be generated into a graphic visual movie.

This could be deemed extremely useful to volleyball teams. One person recording on a simple graph, as I did, could put the information into the data screen I have just described.

It would be programmed to show an animation of the data provided which can then be presented to the team to initiate a thorough post match analysis. It is an important consideration in this particular sport for members of a team to identify strong and weak areas on the court, in order to rectify the issues in later matches. Alternatively, this system will highlight the zones in which the team is succesfully scoring high points.

An extremely advanced level for this system could involve an impact triggered court or similar system which allows automatic feeding of data into the animation generator. This could potentially be utilised in high profile televised games to simplistically present the match analysis to a general audience, especially those who may not necessarily participate in the sport. Ideally, this would eventually lead to a universally understood visual presentation of match analysis.

Noodle Box Interactive Site

Noodle Box is a site produced by Daniel Brown at Amaze in Liverpool. I have been exploring the interactive site (see link) in great depth, and have found i've been enthralled for hours. A movable landscape of buildings is created, with each one containing a different game or animation through flash. I found this an exciting site, which didn't need any particular purpose except to be fun and enjoyable. A successful plaything!