If the face fits(Part 1: Type Specimen book) Akzidenz Grotesk

6th May 202128th Sep 2021Leave a comment

Pages 2-3: Akzidenz Grotesk (Sans-Serif)

I wanted to carry on down a similar path for my next typeface, Akzidenz Grotesk was the next best Sans-Serif to choose. Akzidenz Grotesk’s history goes back further than Helvetica’s but despite this, they are still closely related. Akzidenz Grotesk was the inspiration behind the design of Helvetica.

Akzidenz Grotesk was known as the “jobbing” typeface; what this means is that it was heavily used in trade printing, advertising and forms that were made at the time. The typeface was designed to be seen from a distance. “Akzidenz” comes from the German language and means trade printing for an occasion or event. The latin term refers to it as “that which happens, a casual event, a chance”. I liked this saying and used it further in my design (I will come to that later!)

Keeping in mind that Akzidenz Grotesk was used predominantly in advertising and posters I decided to base my design around this, researching further I also found that Josef Muller Brockmann heavily used Akzidenz Grotesk in his poster designs.

Josef Muller Brockmann

Brockmann was a Swiss Graphic Designer but also the pioneer of the International Typographic Style which tied in brilliantly with this typeface. He was recognised for his clean use of typography, shapes and colours in his designs. His work mainly consisted of poster design. I bought a book about him and studied his posters to see how I could get a similar style for my own design. I also did some in depth research on Pinterest again to get some ideas and a feel for his style.

I found an image on Pinterest which caught my attention and gave me an idea for my design:

I liked the way the colours pop and contrast each other and the different styles/weights and sizes of the text also work together to create contrast. I felt I could create something like this using Akzidenz Grotesk, the Bauhaus colours and make it look like “trade printing or advertising with the modern influence of “Swiss Grit”.

I wanted to create the poster layout for my type specimen pages but just didn’t know how to do it…yet.

Using the image from Pinterest to vaguely copy, I knew I had to layer up and collage different posters to recreate that torn and ripped look. I decided to create a poster with a made up event (A typography exhibition in honour of Josef Muller Brockmann) then layer up behind it contrasting colours and different type relating to Akzidenz Grotesk. The only implication was that I wanted to actually create my poster on a real wall and photograph it and then import it into Photoshop to do any adjustments etc.. The issue was where would I find an urban wall when I live in the country? and how would I even get out to photograph one during lockdown?.. I then looked no further than home because we are currently renovating our house and the upstairs second bedroom wall is being ripped out and is covered in plaster, paint ripped off.. ideal for the urban look! I created a few A3 pages with different colours and pages filled with Akzidenz Grotesk type and then printed them off to later PVA glue onto the wall with a roller which I hoped would give a wrinkled, worn feel.

I enlisted my boyfriend with the roller to help glue them on! I needed someone who (no offence to Chris because he is super talented with cars and a brilliant Motor Vehicle Teacher! :p) has no creative flair or direction and would just stick random pieces anywhere without overthinking it! I procrastinate too much and am too regimental in my approach which is something I did not really want! I wanted it to look random and “rough” . At the end of the evening after doing these posters I decided I needed to go away and have another go printing off more sheets and make further alterations. The blue that I used was too much and it wasn’t layered how I wanted it to be. We just ripped pieces of paper and layered them on top of each other, what I needed to do was to print 4/5 pages and stick them all on top of each other and rip into them to reveal a page at a time.

The next day in my lunchbreak at work I decided to trial a test piece on some card I ripped off a cardboard box; it was rough in texture so I thought it would have the same similar feel to a wall. It turned out to be perfect! I scrapped the wall idea totally and used this as my final piece for my design.

I then imported it into Photoshop and made some minor adjustments like changing the brightness/contrast etc. I also added the type point sizes onto the side of it to show what the type looks like at different sizes. I created 2 more pages on my Indesign document below my Helvetica pages and imported my collage poster into Indesign to start my final layout!

Digital Development

Again, I wanted a layout that was minimalistic and clean with lots of negative space. I decided to place the poster on the right hand side page and place the character alphabet of Akzidenz Grotesk on the left side.

I wanted to use Red as a predominant colour again as it represents Swiss design and also the Bauhaus influence. I wanted to be in keeping with the “Swiss Grit” style of the poster though with the “Akzidenz Grotesk” heading and decided to try something experimental and different… I watched an interview with Chris Ashworth about a year ago where he explained what sort of experimental “grit” typography he does such as sticking type to the bottom of his twin girls school shoes so that when they return back from school in the evening the type is all ragged to give that worn down texture. He then uses this in his pieces rather than using digital textures. I wanted to do something similar for the type on my page. I decided though to try the cellotape method… I made friends with a Graphic Design student on Instagram who is also into Swiss Grit and he did a demo on his page of how he created his “gritty” type. He printed his type out using a laser/inkjet printer and then covered the text with cellotape and gradually pulled away at it to rip the ink off the page onto the cellotape. It worked! It gave a great gritty texture to my type which I then imported in and tweaked to become part of my layout.

Design Development – The stages of reaching my final design and layout!

The final layouts were received VERY well when I uploaded them onto Instagram. It got the most likes my page has ever got and everyone seemed to love it! I felt very proud of this piece when it was done!

The final design pages and final mock up

Responding to Tutor feedback…

“The sketchbooks evidence in between stages, idea development and layout/mark
making: do you have any evidence of the planning for the laying for the Aksidenz
poster?
Is this a place where you could experiment with textures and layering with
surfaces and drawing media?“

I have sketches in my sketchbook and images that I found on Pinterest that inspire the collage that I did for the Akzidenz Grotesk poster:

I agree with the feedback that I didn’t document the Akzidenz Grotesk collage all too well… but it was created entirely how it is pronounced!.. a complete happy AKZIDENT!

I had no idea really how to put the collage together for Akzidenz Grotesk. I tried first on the wall of my house PVA glueing different sheets of coloured paper that I printed out from my printer at work and this just did not work. I tried rubbing Letraset on the walls too, My plan originally was to create the poster on the wall using Letraset letters or printed type on sheets of paper that I would dampen and then rub off onto the wall!

Another thing that inspired me was a few photographs I took of the side of my old cooker… When I moved house in October 2020 I rented my house and inside it I had an awful, old cooker (possibly from the 1970s!!) when I moved it out to clean it I noticed some markings on the side of it. It was quite cool and I took the photos to bank in my resources for any future projects:

I knew I wanted to create this kind of effect but I was struggling as to know how…I then had the idea of photographing some different textures and then importing them into Photoshop to play around with for my poster. These were some of the textures I found, (again, they were all from the upstairs of my house which is currently now only starting to be renovated!)

The textures idea just wasn’t gritty enough for me though… This is where I went to work the next day feeling really frustrated at the fact that I didn’t know how best to create the idea I had in my head!!

I have a very rigid “Neat” approach to my work, everything I do is very structured and organised and I couldn’t quite get myself to create something “messy” enough!- I needed to switch off and just become careless and wreckless to see what I could create!! I had another go on my lunch break when I had the classroom to myself; I filled a paint palette up with PVA, found a screen printing roller to layer it on smooth and what I ended up with was the unexpected, perfect finished piece! I have photos that I have found in my design archive of me creating this final piece but other than me being really inspired by some collage work I found on Pinterest it happened without any prior planning or any planned sketchbook experimental work.. it was completely by accident! A really happy accident! I literally just created pages in Microsoft Word (my work laptop did not have Adobe at the time!) of block coloured pages and pages with some type using Akzidenz Grotesk, I printed them out using the laser printer and then layered them up on top of each other using PVA glue. Carelessly I just ripped sections away to reveal layers underneath. The idea was to create the feel of a really old billboard that has had hundreds of posters ripped off and layered on in its time in a really rural area of a city..

The final piece was perfect for me! In fact it seems such a shame to pack it away with all my Core Concepts work that I have thought about framing it as a showpiece!

Design 1/10: Madrid

8th Jan 20219th Jan 2021Leave a comment

Mind mapping
First Ideas
Colour palettes
Research points
Development of ideas
Digital Development
Final artwork
Final Mock up

I started off feeling really overwhelmed by this exercise. As I mentioned in my introductory post, this exercise is notoriously difficult and challenging for many students and with this in the back of my mind I subconsciously was a little bit apprehensive about it! I started off with the first city on the list which was Madrid; A nice little start to the exercise as I am familiar with Spain even though I have never visited Madrid itself. I decided to mind map Madrid and see where my trail of thoughts led me…

Mind Mapping

I have to admit I did have a stalk on google of what some other students had done for this assignment.. the general outcome for this exercise was based around architectural buildings of the cities or famous landmarks which is completely understandable as the obvious outcome for “coloured blocks” would be buildings. I wanted however to try a different approach and see where that took me.

First Ideas

When I think of Spain in general I think of warmth and warm Reds, Yellows, Oranges, Black, busy, colourful, music, wine drinking, Tapas eating and a chilled way of life. Red, Yellow and Black features in the Spanish flag so I knew I had to use these colours within the design. Socialising, eating and drinking out is a big part of Spanish culture, especially having a drink and tapas in the afternoons or evenings so I wanted to convey this feeling throughout my design. I started to research on Google and Pinterest the different hotspots of places to eat in Madrid. The place which kept coming up the most was Caja Bava which is a brightly coloured street filled with Tapas bars. I collected several images of this street which I documented within my sketchbook and also pinned on Pinterest. I even watched a video of a short tour of the street just to get a feel for what it look like and the vibes it gives out.

These were also a few of the images which inspired me the most:

Colour Palettes

I had no idea what design I might create but I knew I would have to work out some kind of colour scheme, this is what I worked on next.

I used the photos that inspired me the most and in Photoshop using the eyedropper tool I picked out the colours that were most prominent in the photos. These would form a base for my colour palette.

The above screenshots were the palettes that I created from these colours. I then decided to print all of the palettes out and arrange them all onto one sheet to pick out the main colours that could be used; I wanted to organise them into dominant, subordinate and accent colours. I had a little bit of help from my boyfriends cat Bridgette with this!…

The above colours were the ones that I narrowed down. I feel that they reflect the vibes, buildings, warmth and atmosphere of Spain and Madrid. After organising them in an order where I could see what colours worked with each other I then went on to think about the first design and how I would feature the abstract blocks of colour into my design…

Research points

I looked at a wide range of research points for this first design, I was really unsure of where to turn with the “abstract coloured blocks” I did an extensive browse on Pinterest (link below) where I created several folders filled with different images and I also looked up various abstract art and artists. As I said in my previous post I had help from one of my art teacher friends who directed me to a few artists to look into.

I found that researching into Henry Matisse was the most beneficial. Matisse towards the end of his life created art form cut out shapes which he then made into collages and blocks of colour. I did not think originally that these could be classed as blocks of colour but the more I researched into the artist I realised that he was quite renowned for his work related to colour.

Matisse cut out a lot of leaf shapes from paper and used them to create abstract pieces – These were still considered as blocks of colour and it inspired me to think about creating simplistic shapes from objects that exist of one block colour and then make them abstract.

Development of Ideas

I started firstly to design and develop ideas down the food route; As I wrote further up my post, I wanted to explore around Spanish food as it is a big part of Spanish culture. I wanted to convey the bright colours, the exciting food itself, the social aspect and the busy yet laid back Mediterranean lifestyle.

In my sketchbook I drew some initial sketches of some Tapas food just to give me a feel for what I could potentially include on a design.. I ended up really liking these little sketches and went on to create digital versions of them to try out on my digital designs;

I created coloured sketches of Tapas food – Olives, Cheese, Tomatoes, Ham, Peppers, Chillis and Calamari. Calamari sandwiches are a massive deal in Madrid.

Digital Development

Development Idea 1

I started to rearrange the digital drawings of my food in different ways to try and form an abstract design with coloured blocks.. It was tricky! – I concentrated mostly around the calamari illustration; Calamari sandwiches are a delicacy in Madrid! They are a pretty big deal! I situated the Calamari illustrations between coloured blocks to try and get an abstract representation of Calamari in bread or a bread roll/bap. All in all I just felt that it was too “busy” and not quite abstract enough for my liking. I really struggled to interpret food as coloured blocks.. I hated to admit defeat as I really wanted to take a different direction from everyone else, however, landscapes and buildings are best interpreted as coloured blocks. I did a few more experimental layouts for my food idea and then swiftly moved on to try and rework the whole exercise out again.

Back to the drawing board!

Development Idea 2

What I created next was completely accidental and out of sheer boredom and frustration with the exercise at the time! – I sat at my laptop screen on Illustrator and just drew random lines all over the place in a complete daydream and loss at what I was doing! By the time I had finished I could see a resemblance to the Kio Towers (leaning towers of Madrid) and then I gradually started to bring other influences in to it…

This started to look like the Kio Towers (the leaning towers of Madrid!)

I then added in the statue of Calvo Sotelo which is situated between the Kio Towers! — This started to look like the Kio Towers (the leaning towers of Madrid!)

I liked the geometric, modern feel of the abstract architectural illustration.

What I ended up designing was this above; I still really liked my little drawings of the food and was trying to find ways still to incorporate them into the design. I decided to use them below “Madrid” as a colour key for the piece; The colour of each food is a colour that featured on my original colour chart and which I have also used on the above abstract design. I did think that the food icons could also technically be classed as the blocks of colour. The colours are very “Spanish” in feel with the Red and Yellow but I have added contrasting colours in there with the Pink and Blue.

I wanted the typeface for “Madrid” to be simplistic. I knew I wanted it to be a sans-serif font as these are always the best for legibility, readability and best suited for titles and headings. I don’t really like using fonts or typefaces that are gimmicky or that are not well established, therefore I did question myself about choosing a typeface that I was unfamiliar with.. however, the one I chose (Leelawadee) did seem quite appealing and attractive for the piece. The only issue I had with the whole design was that the typography did not match the “abstract” feel; in fact I still felt that the whole piece wasn’t edgy or abstract enough. The blocks of colour that I used seemed flat, it seemed as if I was just colouring in blocks for the sake of making them a colour. I think I had too many colours, my thought process moving on from this stage was to potentially limit the amount of colours to possibly 3. I could pick 3 colours that have strong relations to the country (e.g. the country’s flag colours). For Madrid it would be yellow, red and Black.

Development Idea 3

I tried the design again but this time around tried not to play “too safe”. I wanted to experiment more with the typography and the layout (although not too much!.. I chose good ol Helvetica again for the font!) I had the idea to break Madrid up into its syllables and rearrange them coming slightly off the page.

The above screenshots show how the development progressed.. I much prefer this idea. I messed around with the orientation of “Madrid” at the end of my experimenting I found that Madrid should be written facing the spine and not the pages. It has more impact when you look at it, it stands out and it looks more abstract in design even though there is still a strong geometric influence to it. I have added the red bars in the design because they help to frame the overall design and give it structure. The red boxes are focal points that draw your attention to the design. I made one much smaller and thicker than the other for contrast. I feel in general the design is comfortable to look at; the eye flows comfortably throughout it. I then had to develop it further to get the coloured blocks into the design.

I developed it further (above) experimenting with outlines on the text and contrast of the typography with line weight and thickness. I started to add colour to the blocks. I also outlined the shape of the abstract bull which ties in nicely to Madrid and Spain as a country. The colours I have used are Red and yellow with Black and white added in. The Red and yellow I overlapped and lowered the opacity to mix the colours to create an orange hue. The middle bottom design stands out the most for me.. it has contrast with the typography (Bold vs. regular, black vs. white, big vs. small), the overall layout is more abstract, the bull line work ties in nicely to the city and country and the colours all contrast and compliment each other and are blocks. (yellow=dominant, orange= subordinate and the light pinky red and bold red are accents)…

….

However, I still felt like it was “too busy” the line work took away the “block” aspect of the brief. I wanted to keep the design as simplistic as possible, so I went about developing it even further.

This is what my final design looks like! I simplified it right down to the basic shapes which I think helps you to recognise the landmarks in the design better. I added accent colours in each corner to draw the eye and attention over the whole design.

“Once I get the first one designed and finished, the others should flow quite easily”
Amy Holmes – This was said to her boyfriend after almost ripping her hair out from trying to find an outcome for 1/10 guidebooks! 😀

Exactly what I said above! I knew that this exercise was notoriously difficult and that after I had the first one designed the other 9 should flow and follow the same design thought process and layout etc.. This was true, the others flowed along quite nicely afterwards with the exception of hitting a few “brick walls” along the way.

Take a look at my other 9 posts to see the final designs for each city!