I responded very well to the process of translating my conversation into a typographic communication. In my free time, I tend to always be writing little random notes in various sketchbooks, whether it be a song lyric or part of a quotation that resonates with me, I have an understanding of typographic communication already. Also, the brief really centered my thinking regarding what kind of lines we should choose for our communication.

Choice of location was a major communicator of my idea. The first one I did, in the sink, helped communicate the helplessness, the fleeting nature of my first communication “People really seem to listen, now or when we die?” As the water ran over the ink we wrote the communication in, it washed away down the sink which really emphasized the emotion and energy of that communication. Pasted on a wall, it would’ve just been another random quotation, but writing it around a drain, and including the performative aspect of washing it away, the somber energy was communicated much more clearly. 

Regarding my choice of type, material, and placement of my text, I knew I wanted to think outside of the box. When the tutors said, “Place your text on the building” I immediately knew what they wanted from us. Instead of getting bogged down in cutting out each individual letter of my text with stencils, I immediately began sourcing creative locations around the building to utilize, the sink to start for example, purely because of the performative aspect of washing written ink down the drain. After the first text, me and my partner, we chose to collaborate after we both ran to the sink, decided to write words in our long hair whilst laying on the floor, still using a place in the building, but again, adding a more performative aspect to our piece and creating a new type that no one has seen before. I didn’t just want to write my text on every surface I could find, I wanted to find a new innovative way to create type. I think through the collaboration of my partner and I, we were able to come up with this idea and execute it very well. 

Our communications were very successful, we were able to communicate the energy behind our texts in very creative ways. A lot of people got up in the typography element of the workshop, but my partner and I were able to quickly adapt to our materials/surroundings, and communicate our texts in very innovative ways, ways that the tutors and class hadn’t seen before. I think by chosing to collaborate when it wasn’t required truly helped us in the end because both of our brains together enabled us to really think outside of the box and create very impactful work.

Honestly I wasn’t very impressed with other students work. Almost every other student in the class just wrote their text out in an interesting way. They cut out of colorful paper, stuck it on a window, wrote on a different surface etc. No one was really thinking about the significance of a location to the meaning of their text, they just wrote it in an odd place for the sake of writing it in an odd place. I think after the tutors talked to us at the end of the workshop about the overall point of this workshop, students in my class would be able to create some more meaningful work.