Week 8

9.3.2016 (Week 8)

Zulkifli, Farah Farisya Syamin (300 359 070)

Typography, Type Arrangement, The Letter 

Lecture: 

I was not able to make it to our replacement class due to family emergency matters but was told that my classmates had a sharing session on previous work as per usual and the task for next week was explained. 

Instructions: 

Type arrangement (30%)
Task 1 (10%): The Letter
In this task, you will write (type) a single page love letter to your beloved who has been abroad for the last 6 months. The year is 1986, the world wide web or internet isn’t yet available to the masses, however the desktop computer has been invented. Letters are still a popular means to send and receive news. As, such it has been your practice to write one letter a week on your new desktop computer, print it, seal it in an envelop and post it to your beloved. This single page letter must be written sensibly and sensitively.

Your task is to use Adobe Illustrator to format this letter in a classical letter writing format (in the days of old) – when letter writing was done by hand – using a suitable font (or a combination of fonts), and appropriate margins, alignment, point size, leading and line length.

You will be required to print two copies; one without creases or folds, the other for postage. The letter for posting will require an envelop, as such thought must be put into the writing of the address on the envelop. You will post this letter to yourself, and you will bring this letter to class for submission and discussion. You will as always document all the processes, drafts and the final results on your eportfolio.




Important reading references:
Purdue: Common Letter Writing Formats
Good Letter Writing: Personal Letter Writing TemplateGood Letter Writing: Layouts

(Note* If you stumble on some additional references, do share the on our Facebook group).

Marking Criteria: Lorem Ipsum…

Duration: 2 weeks
Deadline: week 10

My Process&Research

The first thing that popped into my mind when I thought of classical love letters was the type of handwriting that they had - most of them were written in cursive which I absolutely love. To me, cursive writing looks very romantic and I've always adored how it looks. 

I thought of the movie 'The Notebook', I remember watching a scene where Allie discovered the letters that Noah sent and I remembered clearly how it was written and so I searched on Google! 

                                            

I also looked up how old love letters were and the pattern of how they would look. 

So, of course looking at the pattern of these letters, they were all written in cursive and so I started searching for Script fonts and had various options to choose from. 

And then I thought of the content. Their love letters would be intimate, very romantic, sometimes very poetic and not to forget very deep and meaningful. Basically the things we now call 'corny'. 

My Three Options

Font: Voluta Script Pro 

Font: Kuenstler Script LT Std 

Font: Shelley Script 

I had to choose fonts that had similarities to cursive hand writings which meant, it couldn't be 'too' complicated and so I chose my 3 picks.

General Feedback:

• Clarity of pictures posted on blog affects marks 
• Know the purpose of the task -Arrangement (technicality), Formatting and etc 

Reflection:

• Experience

I had a problem with setting up the margins. Gotta check back on how to work with the margins in the next class. As for content, I honestly just wrote whatever came to mind and pretended I was in the 80's and a hopeless romantic who is writing for someone who misses a person.

• Observation 

It was easy for me to envision how it would actually look like even before working on the process for this task but as for the technical stuff, I gotta check back in class. 

• Finding

Through some romantic movies of the 80's, I gotta say I adore how romantic they are in terms of their gestures and choice of words. Cursive hand writing is really romantic, classy and it just displays the whole package!