Fall 2021   ︎ CUNY Queens ︎(DESN241) Design 1

Generalized feedback on shapely letters  pt.1


  • You need to (at least) do the amount of variations asked for. If the homework was to do three variations and you did one, you did 33% of the homework. This is partly to consider for your grade, but also that you should not simply accept your initial version as the final option.
  • The project is to break down a letter into component forms. 
    If your work has single “globby” forms for individual letters you probably want to re-consider how you formed them. It is okay to take a simpler approach. It is not to recreate an existing font or display your mastery of type design.
  • Use a grid to guide your choices. A few people, it felt like, they were simply adding shapes on top of an existing letter forms and the spaces between those forms felt a little bit unconsidered. If you’re in Adobe Illustrator, consider using the align and distribute tools. Other wise use a grid to guide your choices and simply place your shapes within that grid. Your grid doesn’t have to be rectilinear. 
  • Think about the consistency of your shapes. Typically in graphic design stretching letters in one dimension is considered “bad” for a number of reasons
  • Look for hairline spaces. This is just caring about the craft of your work. Try to make the spaces between elements have some kind of harmony between them.
  • Readability is a thing. My tolerance for things being unreadabilty is pretty high, but try to actually read the text you’re creating. Look at it at a distance. If you’re able to print it out, do so.
  • Put care in your shapes (Illustrator) If you’re creating custom shapes, please consider lumpiness in how they are formed. My thought was to do this project without any adjustment of bezier curves. But we can talk about how to improve shape construction. 

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