Two Sides Of Every Story

Typography can just as easily tell a story as any images attached to it. In the opening title sequence for the 2009 movie Orphan, Kyle Cooper uses the font and color of the names to tell a story as it interplays with the images around it. The intro represents the two sides of the main character. The first side is an innocent, normal girl. The depiction of the font and color is one which anyone would consider normal. When the images change to black and dark to represent the darkness of the character the font and colors change to a more jagged style with neonish colors. This change in typography gives you the sense that in these dark scenes, something is not right. The typography in this title gives me some ideas on how to use font in a different way. Font can reflect mood. There is no reason to stick to one font is the mood or what I am trying to portray changes. I feel I may be able to integrate this technique slightly into my project. Maybe show the second side to the story.
Orphan - Clip Opening Title by ohmygore

What Did You Type To Me?

I have fallen in love with the world of typography. Never would I have ever thought that single worlds, letters and symbols could convey such a powerful messages. Everyday we see thousands and thousands of words. These worlds create messages. These messages create representations of ideas. To me this is amazing I am now a lot more aware to the type around me. There are many great typographers but in the Artist Series films on Hillman Curtis' web site two of the artists struck a cord with me, these artists are David Carson and Paula Scher.

Emotions are a driving force in any kind of art or design. Typography is no different. David Carson work with typography are heavily laden with emotions. Each Piece gives off a vibe which you can feel at first glance I felt David’s work to be very raw but also very edgy. These are both attributes which I feel go hand in hand with the emotional qualities of his work. But even with the emotions in hand his work was always logical.

Classic style and instinct are two themes which go hand in hand with Paula Scher. Her no holds back approach to clean traditional logos is something that truly caught my eve. I love the fact that Paula follows her instinct and gut in every piece of work she does. She is clear and to the point. She is not one to mess around and if it is 5 minutes or 5 hours the work will be done to the best of her ability. I was really taken back by her work. It did such a great job of expressing motion, sound and the overall feeling of an event with only type. To me that is quite a feat especially since most of her work used type aesthetically but not artistically as David Carson’s did in a lot of his work.

Photo used with a creative commons license: http://www.flickr.com/photos/impactmatt/4658557073/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Color Me Effective

Pain, Sorrow, Laughter, Sadness, Happiness, Death, Birth. All of these things can be effectively portrayed to an audience through the use of color. Every hue, shade and tone used with complementary colors or contrasting colors can evoke emotions in a watcher. This idea holds true in the world of motion graphics. Although color is usually thought of with art and painting, motion graphics gives life and movement to what is traditionally seen as a static piece. Below I have chosen two examples motion graphics which I feel use color to the best of their abilities.



The first is an example of traditional Motion graphics. I liked how the use of black and white together portrayed the feeling of old and worn out. The introduction of the different colors gives the feeling of new and rebirth. The different hues and intensity of the tones represented in each of the colors gives it a fun lively feeling. I enjoyed this representation.



My second example is not the usual motion graphics but the Kinetic typography. It is a representation of the Jokers “ Why So Serious?” Monologue. Although most of it is done in black and white the use of red for emphasis I found extremely effective. This I believe fully hinges on the fact that that the black white and red are the colors of the Jokers face as represented in the movie “ Dark Night”. This is only escalated by the fact that red can represent aggression, anger but also love in western culture. This moment represented in the graphics is intense put the portrayal of the family and the opposition of the anger and love in the red makes it even stronger. The use of the red words as the mouth at the end makes this clip amazing for me.

Photo used with a creative commons license: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mvrckcoast/3092955086/sizes/m/in/photostream/