All Work

Home town For this summer project I collected a large body of work that i believed reflected my towns character. This included photographs and video that I eventually fused together in the form a flash animation .

Home town

I then went about making sets and characters from the photos in photoshop that could be used to create my animation. The animation was intended to bring to life parts of my home town that only I know about and remember, parts that no one can else would appreciate. Parts that are special to me.

Home town

Photo Intro

Here we were asked to produce 36 photos of one space, for which i chose my bed room. We shot 6 to describe, 6 of foreground & background, 6 of lines, 6 with no view finder, 6 of one object and 6 of one spot. Here are my favorite shots from the collection.

Visual Thinking 2

Notatinal Drawing -This was part two of visual thinking where we visited the science museum in central london. The images on the next few pages are a select few from the 100 or so in my sketch book. For each drawing only 5 minutes was aloud.

Visual Thinking 2

Visual Thinking 2

Visual Thinking 2

Visual Thinking 2

Visual Thinking 3

Type 2D/3D - These are the worksheets and photographs inspired by the form and shape of one lone letter M from a specific typeface.

Visual Thinking 3

Visual Thinking 3

Visual Thinking 4

Visual Thinking 4

Visual Thinking 5

Shoot London - These photographs were taken all in one designated street in Camden town. I created this body of work entirely by ‘shooting from the hip’. So no view finder was used giving the photos a low down often strange orientation.

Visual Thinking 5

Visual Thinking 5

Visual Thinking 5

Visual Thinking 6-7

Diagrams/ Drawing Machine - For the final part of visual thinking our group as illustrated on these pages created this water powered painting machine. (Diagrams and sketches all created by me)

Visual Thinking 6-7

Visual Thinking 6-7

Pocket Archive

For this project we were asked to create and develop an individual collection of work, based on any chosen theme, item or object. I chose to make a collection of stains, stains that can be found everywhere and by everyone. I wanted to create a body of work that celebrated their beauty in a way that would allow everyone to access and appreciate it. I decided to make a set of brushes that can be used in many different ways, that allow the user to appreciate the forms, shapes and textures in a brand new way. The picture above was created entirely from my brushes.

Pocket Archive These were the very first photographs I took using my phone which provided this grainy quality to them. This grainy quality actually made them much better brushes.

Pocket Archive

For this project we were asked to create and develop an individual collection of work, based on any chosen theme, item or object. I chose to make a collection of stains, sta ins that can be found everywhere and by everyone. I wanted to create a body of work that celebrated their beauty in a way that would allow everyone to access and appreciate it. I decided to make a set of brushes that can be used in many different ways, that allow the user to appreciate the forms, shapes and textures in a brand new way.

Pocket Archive

So when do bad stains turn good?

Whiter means Cleaner

Here are a few examples of how marks and splatters have been incorporated into modern designs. The T-shirt at the top contains a very trendy paint splatter effect that is used all to commonly nowadays, along with the nike trainers below. The tea bag looking dress at the bottom is very much at the opposite end of the fashion spectrum, with a tea stained baggy look, that certainly won’t be seen in the nearest top shop any time soon. You have to wonder why this is though. A tea stain isn’t any more radical that a paint splatter but its not used in common design at all.

So despite peoples willingness to have t shirts with paint splatter effects, phones with multi coloured crazy cases and website designs with dirty grunge fonts/ colours, the idea stuck in every ones mind is that white equals clean. I don’t mean clean in an aesthetical sense, I mean in a biologically cleaner sense. When we look at a stained anything, we assume its dirty, when infact it’s exactly the same but marked differently (unless you fall in poo or somthing),

I’m not by any means even saying they should be incorporating all manner of stains into design, but when you sit down and think, its really quite strange how we perceive designed marks and stains.

As you can tell, just from the dictionary definition, stains are perceived to be negative, annoying consequences of our every day life. They have no particular form or shape and are entirely random. The random, unexpected creation of these marks is probably what causes them to annoy us so much.

No one likes surprise’s. Why is it that a clean white t-shirt isn’t viewed in the same way as a clean blank canvas ? The marks that an artist may strive to achieve with his paintbrush are often created entirely by accident in act of spilling or dropping food and drink on to any of our consumerist possessions. So why can’t we look up onto a coffee stained table and appreciate the symmetrical, water marked ringlets where our mugs once stood and think wow. If people can appreciate paintings that may contain nothing but one single block of colour then surely they can appreciate the random yet beautiful simplicity of a stain. Any artist or designer at some point or another comes across the need to recreate something from nature or a random occurrence, such as a paint splatter or a cracked piece of glass. Yet these are also two examples of things that anger people. Most people would greet a paint splatter on their brand new carpet with a tirade of abusive thoughts and sounds. Then why is it that the exact same splatter on paper can become art and instantly appreciated? Maybe some people just don’t like art and would rather live in a clean white utopia where there is no colour or clutter, but most do not. There’s few living rooms that don’t contain at least one painting or drawing, that’s met with a feeling of appreciation and wonder. So why can’t the entire surface of your living room be appreciated in the same way, and looked at with eyes wide open.

I think stains are beautiful.

Pocket Archive

The Daz adverts stuck in your head makes you wants you to wage a war upon any slight blemish until it’s gone. So is it because we, as analy retentive human beings, cant stand the site of a random stain? Or is it because we’re scared of how other followers of the Daz philosophy will look at us?

Despite the word ‘stain’ having a negative definition, It’s still occasionally used in a normal positive way. When it comes to picking out laminate flooring for example, stains are used instead of renders or colour’s. So what is it that makes these stains more beautiful than the ones on your coffee table, if anything at all.

Is it the uniformity? Does a uniform stain fool the onlooker into thinking everything has been done and created intentionally? So if i were to apply this logic, I could spill a drink repeatedly down my top and eventually it would become a ‘design’. It doesn’t seem to work this way though.

Is it because It’s been bought? Is the stain on a bought product more appealing because it simply must have been carefully designed for you to have parted money? Maybe the modern mind just can’t commonly appreciate the unintentional any more, a good example being ripped denim jeans. There’s no good reason not too buy a normal pair and customise them, but nowadays that’s just not good enough. If you don’t have the branded ripped jeans then they can’t be good quality or appealing in anyway.

Maybe its because unintentional looking design has become so normal and standardized that we can no longer appreciate true unintentional marks in our every day lives.

Stains are everywhere and everything

As the dictionary says, a stain can discolour, spot,tarnish and taint. So if we define clean as being white or in its original state, then surly everything is stained. A blank page, a clean, t shirt, an empty sky or an empty space are all waiting to be changed by a mark, an image or a person. So stain really means change but we chose to have a negative literary sibling called stain, which implies a negative change.

A subway mirror.

I want to tear away the negative connotations surrounding the word, and show its positive effects. I could delve deeper into the my sociological and philosophical perceptions regarding stains, but all I’m really trying to say is that i think stains should be celebrated. Stains are everywhere and give every day objects character and individuality. We find reasons to be annoyed about something new every day, so about we stop getting annoyed with stains and learn to appreciate their simplistic elegance and beauty. I want to document and share some of the stains that I encounter in my every day life, wether they result from my own actions, from nature or other people.

Brush Applications Here are a few examples of how the brushes can be used, obviously certain brushes will be better for certain styles, but heres a broad set of uses for my first one.

1

To create this effect, I’ve used the brushes pallet setting to change the shape dynamics and colour dynamics to quite a high degree, creating this grainy rough surface texture.

Above I have created a line of the same, with colour dynamics based on a red swatch. To the left I have simply stamped the corner of the page.

Pocket Archive

1

So What? Ok so I!ve collected a load of stains, so what? Well I want every one to be able to share my views and ideas, so I!m going to create a photoshop brush set, containing aspects from all of my work. Ideally I!d like to make a website containing all of this information and imagery aswell as the brush set download. I could also make a free flyer with the brushes on disc, or even get a collection of memory sticks containting the brushes and a short text clip giving some background information. I just like the idea of being able to give away the work freely and easily. Having a set of photoshop brushes will allow people to see the stains in a new light. Before I took pictures they were just anoying marks, but now I!ve captured them they can be edited and procesed to be used and apreciated in an artistic manner in brush form.

Thus any one will be able to see stains in the same way that I do.

Pocket Archive

Making The Brushes To make the brushes from the photographs I first need to edit and highlight the aspects I think will make good brushes. So all the things shown here will need to be changed and fine tuned to create a black and white highly contrasted template. The template could then be inverted so you could make two different styles of brush if you want. This is on of my first attempts :

This is a colour version of the previous image, so again I!ve used shape dynamics, size dynamics and extreme colour dynamics. I!ve also layered a large white version of the stamp on top to contrast the crazy colours in the background.

1

To create this effect, I!ve used the brushes pallet setting to change the shape dynamics and colour dynamics to quite a high degree, creating this grainy rough surface texture.

1

To make this very textured look I!ve heavily layered the brushes with red colour dynamics underneath and white dynamics on top. The water ringlet in the brush design, creates this very uniform looking multi layered effect.

1

Pocket Archive 1

Pocket Archive This is another piece I created entirely from my brushes.

This brush would be more suitable for being placed in and around the middle of designs, as it doesn!t have clearly defined edges like the first brush.

2

Believe it or not this is still the same brush but I!ve used a technique in photoshop that allows you to have two brushes in one. So its got the outline of the original brush 2 but the stain inside from a different brush. This technique could be used to combine any of the brushed to create 100!s of possible combination.

2 To be honest I didn!t even realize how versatile the brush options where in photoshop. The posabilities for their applications are just endless! When I started making the brushes I was concerned about how well the brushes that had edges were going to work apposed to the ones that where just say black paint splats like brush 2. But now knowing how well they work in conjunction with each other, it just doesn!t matter. I think most of the test pieces I!ve shown so far work well with their own right, as proper pieces of art. I!d like to think that I!ve created them in a way that corresponds to how the original stains were maid; with a bit of luck and random occurrence. I shall continue to edit my photographs and see what other crazy designs come along!

This is a combination of brush one and two using the same technique. There are so many possibilities even when using just two brushes as you can change the size of either brush despite the face their inside each other. You can even make the brush have multiple layers of the secondary brush ontop. The brush!s can be used in many different versatile ways.

2 2

Pocket Archive

More!

This is a complete set of the edited photographs, and therefore brushes. Most of them look better on a much larger scale, but its nice to just to see them all together and see how they work as a set. Part of me wants to edit them down to make a better, neater, consistent looking set. But they work so well in random combinations that its almost a shame to get rid of any.

Pocket Archive

Pocket Archive

Pocket Archive

Pocket Archive

For the final realization of my idea, I created a web site containing all of my research and a few examples of possible brush uses on the front page. Users can also download the brushes from my site and leave comments or post pictures of what they’ve created. This truly shares my idea with the world in the most efficient and accessible manor. Visit my site at www.jameshuse.wordpress.com.

Design Skills

Colour 1 In this group project we created a creature out of entirely found objects all of which had to be orange. We each contributed to this creation after a quick scavinge hunt around uni.

Colour 1

Colour 1

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Storyboarding

Final Piece Draft

Storyboarding

Final Piece

Storyboarding

Final Piece

Bookbinding

Bookbinding

Ice Breaker

For this group project we created a tetris inspired labeling system. The different coloured tetris stickers were intended to label different kinds of places (indicated by the cards) allowing newbies to easily spot new interesting places aswell as share their discoveries with other people. I personally created and edited the tetris cards on the computer aswell as make the cardboard mock ups for unused ideas.

Ice Breaker

Ice Breaker

Concepts 1

Here are my initial 100 ideas for the re-use of a polystyrene cup. Although it was a group project, the 3 of us more or less worked individually so I ended up creating cups with personalitys and simple facial styles. The idea was to make the usually boring and uninteresing shape and colour of the cups actually work with the drawing style, creating cute and collectable objects.

Concepts 1

Concepts 1

Concepts 1

Concepts 1

Concepts 1

Final Pieces

Concepts 2

Aids Day - For this project, after much deliberation we decided to go with the a charity theme based on ‘raising awareness’ The was intended to be a pun on using balloons to both be sold to raise money and let of into the sky with messages attached. The messages could be written by the public or just left as we printed them, with our contact details and information on aids day, our cause and the Terence Higgins Trust info. We took a giant helium canister and hundreds of balloons attached to a trolley around London and raised over a £200.

Concepts 2

Concepts 2

Concepts 3

Sports Day - Our group decided to take quite an untreditional approach to creating a sport. We decided to imagine what it would be like if strictly come dancing was classed as a sport rather than just a competition. We then decided it would be hilarious if it was done by puppets and set in the 80’s. So we created a short tv advert for ‘dancing on string’. (The green puppet was made by me and all video editing).

Concepts 2

Concepts 3

Working Title Ideas

Dont panic A realists guide to sustainability Don’t panic

A realists guide to sustainability

Don’t panic

A realists guide to sustainability

D o n ’ t pa n ic A realists guide to sustainability Don’t panic A realists guide to sustainability To me the content of this manifesto was more important than the format. I personally hate the usual preachy rubbish that’s

Manifesto

forced down our throat in every free leaflet we get through our letter box’s and that most people decided to recycle in their manifestos. I also think most people don’t give a toss about what the government ‘thinks’ people should do so I created this manifesto to be the polar opposite of the usual eco friendly guides. The people that disagree with me will read it and hopefully be more inspired by my lack of concern. The people that truly don’t believe in global warming mite just be happy about being spoken to like a person rather than some kind of gas gargling monster and consider the subtly hinted points in the manifesto.

Don’t panic

A realists guide to sustainability

Don’t panic

A realists guide to sustainability

Dont panic

A realists guide to sustainability

Don't panic A realists guide to sustainability

DA roe a lni s t's tg u i dpa n i c e to s u s ta i n a b i l i t y Manifesto Type developmeant.

Type Face Combination Ideas

Don’t Panic The world is not about to blow up and despite what the alarmists around you mite preach, you alone will never change the world. So thinking that your actually going to make a difference is your biggest downfall. Knowing that you tried is what’s important and anything that comes from it is a bonus so don’t be pushed around into doing anything simply for the benefit of the earth, as you’ll probably lose interest eventually. Find your own reasons for changing any aspect of your life and make it suite you.

Don’t Panic

The world is not about to blow up and despite what the alarmists around you mite preach, you alone will never change the world. So thinking that your actually going to make a difference is your biggest downfall. Knowing that you tried is what’s important and anything that comes from it is a bonus so don’t be pushed around into doing anything simply for the benefit of t h e e a r t h , a s y o u ’ l l p r o b a b l y l o s e i n t e r e s t e v e n t u a l l y. F i n d y o u r own reasons for changing any aspect of your life and make it suite you.

Dont Panic The world is not about to blow up and despite what the alarmists around you mite preach, you alone will never change the world. So thinking that your actually going to make a difference is your biggest downfall. Knowing that you tried is what’s important and anything that comes from it is a bonus so don’t be pushed around into doing anything simply for the benefit of the earth, as you’ll probably lose interest eventually. Find your own reasons for changing any aspect of your life and make it suite you.

Manifesto

Don’t Panic The world is not about to blow up and despite what the alarmists around you mite preach, you alone will never change the world. So thinking that y o u r a c t u a l l y g o i n g t o m a k e a d i ff e r e n c e i s y o u r b i g g e s t d o w n f a l l . K n o w ing that you tried is what’s important and anything that comes from it is a bonus so don’t be pushed around into doing anything simply for the b e n e f i t o f t h e e a r t h , a s y o u ’ l l p r o b a b l y l o s e i n t e r e s t e v e n t u a l l y. F i n d y o u r own reasons for changing any aspect of your life and make it suite you.

Don’t Panic The world is not about to blow up and despite what the alarmists around you mite preach, you alone will never change the world. So thinking that your actually going to make a difference is your biggest downfall. Knowing that you tried is what’s iVmportant and anything that comes from it is a bonus so don’t be pushed around into doing anything simply for the benefit of the earth, as you’ll probably lose interest eventually. Find your own reasons for changing any aspect of your life and make it suite you.

Don’t Panic The world is not about to blow up and despite what the alarmists around you mite preach, you alone will never change the world. So thinking that your actually going to make a difference is your biggest downfall. Knowing that you tried is what’s important and anything that comes from it is a bonus so don’t be pushed around into doing anything simply for the benefit of the earth, as you’ll probably lose interest eventually. Find your own reasons for changing any aspect of your life and make it suite you.

Manifesto

Manifesto

Manifesto

Photography 1

This project was intended to explore interface through the use of colour. I decided to look at signs as they are the most clear and abundant use of exactly that. We interface with the world and streets through a set blueprint of rules inforced by the invisible police in the form of signs.

Photography 1

Final Pieces

Photography 1

Photography 2

This project was an exploration of portraits in the form of facial recognition. I wanted to look at how you remember people in your head. The thinking behind this is just as important to me as the end result. To further understand my work read my short essay in a few pages time.

Photography 2

Photography 2

How do we define the faces of people we’ve known for years or months, people who’s faces we have gazed upon countless times? Do we define them by the features or by their nature? We define an unknown person by their appearance but a familiar person by our relationship with them, this is when the subtle haze begins to fall upon those around us, which blurs features or extenuates them in our minds. What we consciously once saw we now subconsciously forget. This probably happens in relationships most obviously, once a couple has been together for a long period of time, there attraction becomes absolute. The bed hair and lack of makeup that may have warn you away on a first encounter is now normal and acceptable. Some would say this is simply down to loving a person for who they are but others argue that it’s more down to the way we process faces. When you meet a stranger your brain goes in to overdrive, looking for discernable features and aspects to help you remember and analyse them. If we did this every single time we met a person, we would never be able to recognise them, so we base new encounters on what we have already seen. Like a portrait that is constantly being worked on, we add to and change the image of some one in our minds until it is complete. Upon completion the painting is shipped of to a gallery, as is the face of a person to our long-term memory. So once the image has left our short-term memory it is not normally edited again, simply referred to subconsciously to recognise someone at first glance. We never look at someone in the same way as we do upon our first encounters ever again so we indulge upon our perceptions of someone to allow ourselves to move on from shallow thoughts and feelings. My question is how do the faces in our heads get put together? We tend to remember both an overall view of some one as well as tiny little details that only after many encounters can you learn to appreciate. It can’t simply be one face suspended in our memory, it must be collective view of texture, colour, shape, shadow, touch and many other facial aspects. Through photographs I want to look at how I can represent the faces from my mind on paper and incorporate aspects that are important to me. I also want to show how you actually perceive the world around you in relationship to faces. A photo could record the face of everyone upon a street, but a person’s memory can store only fragmented details. Just trying to picture how someone looks in your mind is quite difficult. Remembering certain times you have seen them is easy, like a dream you can picture certain aspects, but it’s always hazy. I’m sure everyone has had a dream where they know someone is there, but they cant actually see their face clearly. This is again all down to memory’s being built up over time to give you a very 4D look at something or someone. You can remember how they feel, look, taste, sound throughout the time you’ve known them. This is not the kind of thing you can easily represent in a two-dimensional form, either in your head or on paper. I however would at least like to give it a go. How might the data be stored in our brains? Would it be in the form of light-waves that we store and recreate in our minds to form an image? Or in the form of code and binary, where we could have a sort of organic pixel map of what we once saw?

Photography 2

Photography 2

Photography 2

Here are very small selection of the 1000 or so faces that I cut out from my photos to be used in this project. All photos were organised into chronological order to reflect the passing of time in my life and head.

These screenshots were taken from my movie of all the collected

Photography 2

faces. The frame rate is extremely fast giving you barely any time to make out any discernible features. I went on to add filters and music as you can see on the final movie on the next page. The filters added to the effect and created a more hypnotic fast moving video that blured the lines between seeing a face and recognising one.

Photography 2

Final Movie

Self Initiated Project

For this self directed project I used my photography 2 work as a starting point and wanted to look at memory. I considered ways of using colour and photography to demonstrate analogic visual representations of memory and how it changed depending on age but ended up coming full circle and again used faces from my past photos to create a film based installation piece.

Yellow

:)

Red

Blue

Hello Hello Hello

anger

please go die Self Initiated Project

These were some early experiments using colour to alter the meanings and feelings associated with language in relation to how our brains process and understand information.

This is another example of how easily your brain can influence you view of something. This here is less of an optical illusion but more a hard wired sensory response. Both of these images are exactly the same except flipped in different orientations. The one at the top looks more or less like a normal face, yet when viewed the right way round you can clearly see the eyes are upside down.

These are just a few examples of colour word association. The smiley face and soft yellow render instantly make the word anger have less power and meaning, the same goes for sentence coloured in a positive looking shade of blue. Because we identify certain colours with pre conceived emotions and thoughts we instantly create a context in which to read the body of text. This yet again is all down to memory. Some people will find certain colours more attractive than others, they may be reminded of a certain occasion where that colour meant somthing but this can happen both subconsciously and consciously. For example look at the words below; Blue Yellow Red If you quickly scan down and try and say the colour of the word as apposed to what the word says then your mind has to fight the urge to read the word. So you consciously read the word but subconsciously look at the colour. So colour and imagery can be very simply and easily used to influence the context in which you read or view or anything.

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

This is the entire collection of faces that I cut out from my photos, in total there are 4000.

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project These two movies were created from cut out eyes and cut out noses, leaving two separate videos that I next merged together.

Self Initiated Project

Self Initiated Project

Final Movie

4000 Faces

Self Initiated Project

How can you describe your memory of some one? Do you remember one static image like a face on a id card or a vast collection of images and flash backs spanning the entirety of your relationship? I believe it to be the latter and here is my attempt at showing how one mite remember and recall faces from the past. In this forever-looping video, there are the faces of 4,000 people, cropped in chronological order from my personnel photographs taken over the past few years. Each face has been chopped into eyes, noses and mouths and then rearranged through out the video so the whole face from one photo is never seen. What’s left is this collection of 4,000 new faces, ready to be found by you. Pause the video with the remote at any time you chose, as though it were your own mind franticly attempting to remember the face of somebody you’ve bumped into.

Type Introduction

Type Introduction

The Anatomy Of Type

Ag R Individual letters make words and words make up sentences (or lines) and lines make up paragraphs. Paragraphs make up columns of text and columns of text make up pages. When handling type we are dealing with pre-designed forms. Only very few experienced typographers take the time and considerable effort to design new typefaces. Over the years many thousands of typefaces have been designed, so the choice is quite enormous. When we look at individual typefaces we can see that they each have their own particular characteristics and ‘personality’. If we examine each of the 26 letters of the alphabet, we can see that the form and structure of that letter has a special relationship with the background on which it sits. Not only does the shape of the letter itself give it form, but the space around it accents the individuality. When two or more letters are put together they create words which are recognised as complete shapes, rather than a collection of individually recognisable letters. Typeset words create for us a visual presentation of our language and, as with inflection of speech, we can modify greatly the meaning of each word or texts by our choice of typeface.

Capital Line

Base Line

Reading is a chore and it is the typographer’s art and skill that alleviates that chore by creating effective typographic signposting systems to help the reader. Since we accept that words were written to convey information then it is essential the all is done to maximise comprehension, this can be achieved with liveliness, beauty and wit.

Ear

Link

Loop

An understanding of letterforms and texts and their interaction with one another is important to the typographer together with an understanding of the basic design principle that underpin one’s decision making. However, a designer is a planner and a manager and it is essential that he or she is able to translate his or her ideas onto the printed page. This will involve the need to understand the technicalities of letter composition, type specification, artwork and graphic reproduction.

Serif

Tail

Desender Line

Bowl

X - Height line

Type can look bold, light, thin, fat, warm, cold, aggressive, passive, quiet, lyrical, sad, happy and represent virtually all the human emotions. We can call upon the qualities of a wide range of type styles to help us covey information in the most effective or desirable way. Choice of different typestyles enable us to change emphasis and can help to devise a structured hierarchy of information as well as being able to enhance the emotive quality of the words or text.

James Huse

Expressive Letterforms

Here our group looked for letter forms in the act of cleaning shoes. We created five videos and played them next to each other on 5 laptops in front of the class. Each video depicted a different letter to spell out the word ‘scuff’.

Expressive Letterforms

Expressive Letterforms

Expressive Letterforms

Final Movie

Wiz Type

Here our group was asked to celebrate the typeface ‘Syntax’. I was asked to just look at the punctuation but to make the angled stroke endings and freshness the focal point of the celebration.

Wiz Type

Wiz Type

Wiz Type

Wiz Type

Wiz Type

Wiz Type

Wiz Type

Wiz Type

, @ Wiz Type

, @* Syntax

!”#$%&()*’˝‘/:;? [\]^`{}~¢¨‚“”¤¥§

Hans Eduard Meir was born in Horgen, Zurich in Switzerland on the 30th of December 1922. After he completed an apprenticeship as a typesetter he went to specialize in typography and graphic design at a school in Zurich called ‘Kunstgewerbeschule’. He learned the art of calligraphy under the guidance of his teachers Alfred Willimann and Rudolf Käch, which helped later form the basis of many of his famous type designs. After graduating he worked in Zurich and Paris as a graphic designer as well as working for UNESCO. From 1950 to 1986 he taught writing, typography and constructive drawing at the School of Design in Zurich. In addition, he had time for his own work for industry, publishers and cultural events. He also published certain texts in educational journals and wrote the book ‘The Development of Script and Type’ all of which have become very useful and highly sought after learning materials worldwide. Some of his most famous works were created while he worked with Stempel in the late 1960s, creating that most humanist of sanserifs, Syntax, a type whose influence is clear in Spiekermann’s Meta and its followers. Syntax is based on both Renaissance minuscule writing and Roman lapidary capitals. The design is a blend of a monoline sans serif with a more lively humanistic roman, resulting in a highly legible sans serif type with a wide range of uses, from captions and text to packaging and signage. The original drawings were done in 1954; first by writing the letters with a brush, then redrawing their essential linear forms, and finally adding balanced amounts of weight to the skeletons to produce optically monoline letterforms.

In 1989, the original foundry metal types were digitized by Adobe, which also expanded the family to include bold and ultrabold weights, resulting in a family of four roman’s and one italic in lightest weight fonts. Meier described Syntax as being a sans-serif face modeled on the Renaissance serif typeface, similar to Bembo. The uppercase has a wide proportion, and the terminals not being parallel to the baseline provide a sense of animation. The lowercase a and g follow the old style model of having two stories.

The italics are a combination of humanist italic forms, seen in the lowercase italic q, and realist obliques, seen in the lowercase italic a, which retains two stories, unlike in other humanist sans-serif typefaces.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Wiz Type

This is the final packaging that the whole group helped to develop which I designed and made.