← fall 2018
← artgr511
Sound Made Visible
Objective
To develop an understanding of how sound manifests itself as marks on paper.
To visually communicate the intentions of the speaker.
To demonstrate an understanding and use of the design principles to create visually compelling design.
To demonstrate a facility with Adobe Illustrator and/or Adobe InDesign.
Prior to this project I haven’t thought very deeply about my ability to convey the intent and emotion of the speaker as “marks on paper”. I’m aware of the connotations that certain typefaces and their uses have, but haven’t thought too deeply about how I might force the type to create a distinct mood visually as opposed to using type to tell the viewer how to create the mood for themselves.
Process
Begin by listening to stand–up comedians on Pandora, YouTube, etc. Transcribe about two to three minutes of one comic’s routine.
Final form, your choice:
PRINT
In an 10" × 10" square (no smaller, larger is OK): typographically communicate your interpretation of the intentions of the comedian. Size can vary, if you choose. No images.
or SCREEN
Using movement, sound, and typography, communicate your interpretation of intentions of the comedian. No images.
I chose to work with a section of Ali Wong’s Baby Cobra Netflix comedy special due to her animated style of physical and verbal movements. She changes her pitch and volume in order to convey different meanings, mimic various people in her routine, and more.
Sketches & Research
I began by listening and watching Wong’s performance repeatedly, and finally deciding on a snippet of her performance which was about 1–minute, 128 words, long. I began with sketches where I took highlights of the snippet and wrote them out on 10" × 10" paper. I felt as though this wasn’t helping me realize how to accurately recreating the sensation, so I began drawing strokes using ink on the paper, and later vector lines in Illustrator in order to visualize the circuitous way in which Wong delivers her performance. This aided me in realizing that the seeing of type along segments of perfect circles and lines served as a strong visual metaphor for Wong’s structured and rehearsed performance being seen as neurotic and unstable to the audience.
I laid type in different forms consisting of segmented lines and circles. I made a few attempts at creating a contiguous line of text, but it seemed to lean too much towards the structure and predictability that I was trying to mask in the work. I began laying the type exclusively on segments of circles, breaking Wong paused in her performance or as she changed tone. This method served her performance best, as it highlighted her intermittent pausing, her drastic change in tone, and roundabout way in which she talks about her subjects. The piece is anchored by two excerpts from her performance “yoko ono factory” and “wes anderson film” which fall in line with the direction of the segments of text in order to leave the reader’s eye uninterrupted.
The typeface used in this piece is Gotham Rounded — Italic Light, Book, Italic Book, Medium, and Italic Medium variants. The use of these five variants as well as changes in their scale allowed me to visualize Wong’s performance in a more uniform manner. Additionally, the high x–height of Gotham Rounded hinders it from being legible in large sections of body text, but serves it well here as it creates a more linear “stroke” along the paths. This is can be seen when compared to the identical composition set in Adobe Garamond Pro which features a noticeably lower x–height.
