Think Lab Activity 4: Expressive Typography

Every art expression is rooted fundamentally in the personality and temperament of the artist. For this activity of think lab we had to summon our inner artist to add some element to typography. We all have been vaguely familiar with typography and somewhere or the other have used it in our own lives as well, be it while making a PPT or a Word file or even handwritten for a school project we all have crossed paths with it. Like always the day was divided into 2 segments: Warm Up Activity and Main Activity.

WARM UP ACTIVITY

For the warm up activity we were first sensitized to this new concept of 'Expressive Typography'. We were shown various examples as to how to arrange words and letters for them to actually start showing the meaning of it in the word itself. After that we were divided into a group of four people, my group consists of Rubin Stephan, Harshul Grover, Shreya Sharma and myself. Each group was given 2 set of words. The word provided to my group was Distraction and Trapped. Soon we joined our respective groups and divided our work. I was working on the word: Distracted.

In my first illustration I tried to depict the word distraction by actually making some distractions. In order to do that I wrote the letter in varying sized and to add some emphasis I doubled certain letters and left the inner region blank. Just like the word itself I wanted to ignite a feeling of distraction when you look at the word.

For my second illustration I tried to get the feeling of distraction by enlarging the letter 'T' and basing every other letter around it. To emphasize on the distraction part I hung the letter 'D' on the letter 'T'. Initially I wanted to color the entire letter 'T' black but I had second thoughts that it would distract too much from the other letter, hence I just added few lines.

Together as a group we had to produce 8 outputs, 4 of each word via a physical or digital medium. On of my group members tried the digital platform and he was more comfortable with it as well. After we were done we had to upload our individual work on google slides.

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MAIN ACTIVITY

This time for the main activity we all had to work individually. We had to choose a short story or poem of not more than 3 to 4 lines of our choice and use expressive typography to communicate the story. We were given 1 hour to complete the task.

I chose this poem by Rupi Kaur. This poem is about a women and the message behind this poem just stuck by me. When a girl is born she is innocent, she is new to this word and doesn't carry any notions regarding her possibilities. She believes that she can achieve even the impossible if she puts her heart to it. Then she falls pray to this vicious trap of society where she is presented with limitless restrictions and given rules without explanations. Eventually she grows up to believe that there are certain things which are out of her reach whereas the reality is that she's a bird who's been put in a cage by these restrictions that she wasn't born with but now has been conditioned to live with.

I wanted to express my perception of the poem in my expressive typography. I chose a wrapping around way of writing the text to depict the 'cage' or the restrictions imposed by the society. I have written the word 'she' in the middle and I've thickened it to give emphasis to the main essence of the poem. I've also made certain chain like figures at the beginning and end of the poem and even somewhere in the middle as well. My tutor wanted me to fill the edges of the composition to give a more strong impact and i agree with it.

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OUTCOME:

Group Achievement:

1. Group coordination with flow of work and ideas.

2. Communication about each others work.

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Group Struggles:

1. A little struggle with time management

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LEARNING MANTRA

Words are the clothes our thoughts wear and we have the power to express it.

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Reflection:

The activity started off on a dull vibe and the true nature of the upcoming activity wasn't felt. Eventually as the briefing ended and the activity started the enjoyment started with it. Expressive Typography hasn't been a much explored territory for me and I was intimidated by it in the beginning but when I started working with it the fear nullified. I think I personally would like to explore this activity beyond the virtual classroom because it holds way more than we can explore in 6 hours. When short stories and poems was mentioned in class I instantly got pumped up with exhilaration as I really enjoy them, its fascination how such deep meanings are hidden in just 3-4 sentences. Overall I think it was a very enlightening activity and very soothing for me at least and it ended 25 minutes prior to the estimated time so that's an added bonus. Poems and short stories are mostly expressed in a contemporary way but it goes beyond that, its when emotion have found its thought and the thought have found words and today we gave these words a different shield to behold.

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