CALLIGRAM
CALLIGRAM:
I designed a series of Calligrams like this to bring attraction to the public to visit the Museum of London. It really appealed to me that I could see how quickly London has changed due to Modernisation. It was good to see how the forefathers and mothers lived; when London city was maturing and managing it self to become what it is today. Thanks to the industrial revolution. Instead of me bringing something modern into the Museum of London my experience was to bring it out the modern London that I know to replace it with the old school London. To reveal the origins and its predecessors that is hidden and tucked in a corner of the museum of a Taxi, Candlestick Phones and a Traffic Light.
Even thought I like the versions of these objects, don’t get me wrong I prefer the modern version but because I haven’t experienced its earlier models. So now that I have witnessed it, it has a cool factor about it.
These Calligrams merges the modern with the old making the unseen, see-able. To have the same experience as I had; walking in the same London streets as I do but back in time when visiting the museum. To work with the viewer to say without the old they would be no new.
So I based my designs on things that make the streets of London.
I will place my designs next to the actual object I designed from which are the Taxi, Traffic Light and Candle- stick phone. With a modern design feel with homemade letter pressed typefaces.
All this started without an idea. But with a hand writing exercise that involved me writing my name right hand and then with my left hand noticing that there is a difference with my non-writing hand writes like a child. Then it developed into drawing the alphabet onto triangle grid paper using only the diagonal lines taking me out of the normal way that I do things. Which inspired me to do letter pressing and cropped out the letters to spell a word using Photoshop to get an organic look to have a organic feel I felt when visiting the Museum
of London. Then I took images from the Internet to visually understand what is a calligram and how does it look? Or how does it present itself? To how does it make the viewer response to a Calligram when it looked at it? I achieved this by first knowing what the definition is of what the Calligram is. So I jotted my initial ideas that came to mind and stuck with one idea, which was the traffic light and ignored the rest and later on chose the Candlestick Phone plus the taxi. Because it sat well together in harmony; complimenting each other very well. The choice of colour I used for the actual Calligram itself was from the original object I designed from. The background colours were chosen around the images that suited the type making the Calligram. The physcogeography had no effect during this design. It was my experience visiting the Museum of London that awoken my creativity to create these series in which you see before you. The game changer was seeing these old reminders, these artifacts of old school London.
