Typography - Week 9

10.03.2016 (Week 9)
Go Yin Nee (300 491 531)
Typography

Lecture
First of all, Mr Vinod briefly go through our upcoming task which is design a booklet. He also go through a briefly explanation of our recent task, love letter. He then explaining symbols from the slide presentation. After that, we have a discussion and sharing session towards our recent task. Each of us shared our process and draft, and briefly explained it.

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.

   
Above: Classical letter samples

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

Process and Outcome

I had rearranged my letter to make it look neat and clean. I try to open guide and grid when arranging the letter format. 

The final outcome 

I chose Pristina fonts for my love letter. Pristina fonts look like handwriting fonts, I think it is much suitable for letter during 80s. People with no type writer machine, they used to hand write their letter. Also, I think that Pristina fonts do look romantic and classic, it is more towards letter that written from Rome or Italy.

Posting my letter

Received my letter

Feedback

Messages are too long in the same line. Go a bit left hand side, the spacing of left and right is not balance. The line spacing between the top and the bottom line are too close, it touching the underneath words.
Artwork for the letter is a screen grab and is not complete A4, its cropped do it again. 

Reflection 

Experience: It was quite fun compare with other tasks, it was also my first time writing a love letter, and send it back to myself. It was an unique experiences.

Observation: I observed that I need to improve the way I arrange my words and fonts. It looks messy.

Findings: I found that writing myself a letter was fun since I never experience it in my life.