Throughout my career as a graphic designer, I’ve asked this question many times and tried to answer it to the best of my abilities by explorations in typography, illustration, information design, branding, and visual identity, just to name a few. This page will be updated into a blog format that explores my thoughts on graphic design through sketches and concepts that may turn into something tangible, or simply exist as constructs.
TYPOGRAPHY
Typography is powerful and controversial. Times New Roman is a tried and tested typeface, a proper informational type that can be used in a variety of purposes. Modern contemporaries like Gotham and Hoefler are the next generation in mass-consumed communications. Aksidenz Grotesk, an early 20th century typeface, is known for its sharp geometry and structure. I find it appropriate when used with photography and negative space.
Typography is a brand, an identity that many world-class cities have taken advantage of. Paris uses Didot for their public service anouncements such as road closures and engineering works, and I found that quite fitting for a sophisticated, fashionable city. New York City on the other hand has Helvetica engrained to their culture, starting with their subway system. London has the Johnston typeface, first used on the London Underground, and it became the city's identity by the late 20th century. In NYC, Helvetica is almost everywhere and anywhere.
During my studies at OCAD University, I experimented with expressive typography to create rough concepts on infographics and cartography. I also experimented with combining handwritten type for these CD covers of a beatboxer. I wanted to imbue a sense of improvisation while using machine-based typefaces to balance the impulse of handwritten type.
I like to experiment with typography, taking advantage of a font's weight, size, geometry, structure, and other qualities to create an engaging piece of visual communication. Using a method of blocking out transparency paper with type to create an aperture in front of a camera lens, I used this technique to shoot street lights and lit objects at night to create repetitive expressions of the words I printed onto the transparency.
Typography becomes the aperture of the lens, and when shot in street lights at night where light is focused and isolated, weird and wonderful things happen. I took photographs of each word, letter, and number onto street lights and lit windows in the university campus, then juxtaposing them altogether on Photoshop to create a poster that looks like a photograph itself. The aesthetic is similar to neon lights and text that moves through a freeway.
ILLUSTRATION
My sketches and illustrations of everyday life are put into the context of the places I enjoy exploring in – subway stations and rail carriages, the built environment – places that others see no emotional value in being present to. These illustrations allow me to explore these spaces and reimagining them, from very dense compositions to surreal situations not possible in reality. I love getting lost in the details, without restricting myself to deadlines or objectives. Black and white, fine pen illustration offers the viewer a raw experience, free of colour and flourish and leaving it up to them to fill in the gaps. I draw as small as possible using fine Sakura pens, and I’m learning to draw more on digital using an iPad to attain even finer detail on an infinite canvas concept.
The only illustration to date that has some value as to becoming a signature piece is this drawing of a cutaway of OCAD University I drew during my thesis year. I needed a break from my studies and so I focused on creating this surreal piece of the school’s design building cut away to reveal the chaos of everyday student life, invaded by large cockroach-like computer bugs. At the time, I was at the IT department for work-study, and I needed to express the frustrations of technology while juggling with my studies and keeping myself sane out of it all. A few years later, while working at Xenophile Media (see Anxietyville) my producer noticed this drawing, bought it, and gifted it to OCAD U President Dr. Sara Diamond.
