Retna

Retna is an Los Angeles based graffiti artist most popularly known for his humungous mural pieces that can be found all over the city and the world. He's traveled to places like Belgium and England to exhibit his unique pieces of art. He's been involved with graffiti since 1984 until he then turned towards fine arts and mural painting in 1997. In the photo above, he was responsible for the illustrative writing in the background of the mural. His work can be considered a piece of typographic art because of his use of black letter calligraphy to make a pattern that's very reminiscent of arabesque writing. Although his writing is in the background of the mural is compliments the subject of the mural very well because it becomes a sort of illustration in itself.

Here are more photos...

Exercise #2 reflection

Exercise #2: Type as Shape, involved experimenting with setting letters in ten different typefaces and then choosing which parts of the ten letters to cut in to 3 x 3 pieces to later piece together to form a new image. The goal of this exercise was to learn and appreciate the anatomy of each letterform while also realizing the distinguishing features and additions each typeface adds to the letters themselves. I had a lot of trouble with this exercise because none of the pieces I cut out complimented each other how I planned them to so I had to improvise. I’m not completely satisfied with my final product but it’s better than my first draft plus it looks like I intentionally spelled out “Yo”! The top left corner of this piece was cut from a lowercase k in Franklin Gothic while the top right corner was taken from a lowercase g in HS Serif Gothic (one of my “wildcard” typefaces”). The lower left corner was cut from a lowercase t in Eurostile (another one of my “wildcard” typefaces) and the lower right corner was cut from a lowercase g in Baskerville. Eurostile is a pretty contemporary typeface being that it was created in the 1960’s while Franklin Gothic, which is a bit older is also considered modern being that it was created in the 1900’s-both are part of the san serifs category. Baskerville is the oldest and only one with serifs of the group of typefaces that I chose-it was created in the 1750’s. The difference in typefaces in my piece are only noticed when the stroke weight is observed-meaning, that the lower right corner you can observe the contrasting weights in the Baskerville typeface while the other three corners there is no immediately observable difference in stroke weights.

Holaaaa

Weirdly enough, this isn’t the first blog I’ve written on- to be honest this is blog/site #4 or #5. Before my Visual Communication class, I had never really paid much attention to typefaces, sizing, kerning, or even knew what a serif was- I guess this Typography class is more or less a continuation of last semester’s class. I envy the people that are able to create visually appealing pieces that contain nothing but copy. Having the ability to create something like the image below is my goal that I plan to achieve by the end of the semester. I also want to learn the differences between Helvetica and Arial. ;p COMIC SANS 4 LYFE Y’ALL.

Just kidding…