Summer Brief 2012

We were given a brief during the summer holidays which stated to produce ' An Alphabet that Visually Communicates YOU as an individual'

I didn't want to have a different 'meaning' for each individual letter as I didn't think it was very sequencial and I wanted them to all look similar so that it would work visually as a successful series.

Firstly, I came up with lists of personality traits I could base the brief on followed by 10 initial ideas to work from which I thought would represent aspects of my personality.

Initial Ideas

I then decided to develop 4 of these ideas:

Hair Alphabet and Experimentation Attempt

Hairstyle which was unsuccessful due to the uncontrollable nature of the material being used, making the aesthetic seem messy and unconsidered.

Monster Alphabet and Experimentation Attempt

Monsters which was successful but I think wouldn't have communicated my personality very well as it may seem quite detatched from me.

Tower of Books Alphabet and Experimentation Attempt

Towers of Books which was successful in thier communication but not very successful in thier presentation as they kept falling down or not working.

Simplistic Alphabet and Experimentation Attempt

Simplistic Shapes as I like my work to be simplistic and minimalist with high impact yet again I think it was quite detatched from me and my personality.

After considering these several possibilities which I didn't think was personal enough,  I realised how similar the simplistic shapes and the idea of piling up books looked like the game Tetris. I settled on the idea of producing the alphabet in the style of the Gameboy video game as I used to play it when I was younger and is one of my fondest childhood memories. This way, I could produce an alphabet to communicate an aspect of me as an individual without giving too much away.

Pen Drawn Tetris Experimentation

I developed the alphabet by using a grid format and working out the placement/composition that would have to be used in order to get the Tetris shapes to fit together convincingly.

Excel Tetris Alphabet Experimentation

I then tested the idea out on the program Excel due to its grid like nature. Even though it replicated the digital nature of the game, I didn't think it looked convincing as a replica of the game.

Final Piece Card Attempts

From this, I decided to use the media of card as I don't have the ability to access professional computer programmes at home that will aid the aesthetic and I found that I could get a clean line, block colour shape and even colouration by using card instead.

Final Piece:

My full 26- Letter 'Tetris Alphabet'

 Close-Up Photographs of Select Individual Letters in my 'Tetris Alphabet'

I think it was quite successful as it was a clever idea, came out well physically and the actual physically produced cards hinted at personality traits that I have, such as how particular I am and controlling about my work and how I like order and consistancy, not just focusing on the literal reason of my alphabet choice.