project 1 has been in process since last week in type studio 1, but I’ll give a brief rundown for those who care. The project is a call for entries for a typeface design competition in japan, through a company called Morisawa. The project calls for a multi-part, unified design including an enclosing envelope, cover page, two page instruction sheet, 3 page type specimen sample, and entry form. We spent the last two class periods creating a logotype (hand drawn or digital) starting with thumbnails and working up, and most recently, defining a grid system on which to base all of the materials. I’ll post all of the sample sheets and project description in a day or two (I have to scan in the pages, since the professor refuses to enter the digital age for classroom instruction, even though we meet in a computer lab).

So, the basic in class process runs like this.
logotype design (sketches) -> logotype roughs (digital) -> grid system line, greeked, actual type -> type study in place -> further production and assemblage.

I’ll post the supporting documentation and samples tonight.

I will often speak of what good scad graphic design students refer to as “the process” or “my process”. the design process is at the heart of the grad graphic design program. Although you are encouraged to do thumbs, roughs, and type studies at BJU, they are not formalized stages or grading stages for a project. At scad, each project is to be accompanied by a process folder. This folder is a guide to the project at hand, including research printouts, sketches, thumbnails, roughs, type studies, color studies, initial mechanicals, and the final project. Throughout each project, the professor will look through this process folder to see what work you have done for the project. This also means that you cannot skate through some of the stages of the design process, because someone will be evaluating your process as well as your final project. As an organizational freak, I like the whole folder system, but it seems that it may be too formalized to deal with creative beginnings to a project. Also, I like to use my hardbound sketchbook rather than loose-leaf paper to do my initial sketches and thumbnails. I guess it will have to grow on me. So there you have it–the “process”.