Laser cutting no.2

 

Paula Scher


Play!

The purple post it note reminded me of this piece by Scher that I was actually really inspired by during the BBC Maestro course and the origin of the poster from play to finalised. As an illustrator, my go-to is always to start with a pencil or pen on paper and visually work out my thoughts to then develop and often I end up preferring the hand rendered, visual thinking over the refined outcome, which is the same with this piece for me. I really enjoy the in-perfection and non-uniformity of hand drawn type and was just inspired to 'play' so I gave it a go:





Creating a 3 dimensional visual from 2 dimensional - these would be cool to recreate digitally but the likelihood of them being any other than digital or print is low.





The colour usage here is interesting because I automatically went for my preferred colours rather than thinking about what I was trying to visualise and whilst the blue and green don't work well together, being two opposing shades, it visually works better and compliments the words. Admittedly these visual thoughts are just that - thoughts - so the colours don't particularly matter, it's just interesting to catch myself falling into my usual habits rather than thinking about what makes more sense for the design.

In terms of the actual designs, they don't feel chaotic enough - everything feels placed rather than random like it did with the paper so I need to try again with that. I need to play around with overlapping and see how that could work - it could be a good idea to look into visual displays of dyslexia but I do then take the risk of stepping too far away from what I'm tying to do overall. I want to carry on looking at visual curiosity and the concept of levelling the field but I don't want to really get into any specific learning disabilities because I don’t really have the time for that.

In order to continue with the use of wood, I put together a few word explosions to use with the laser cutter, with the two black text ones being rasters and the colour one being an engraving:




Not the best resolution but the visuals are there.





Part of this design worked and it could definitely work better but the layout of the type is just a bit of a mess rather than visual confusion. The purpose is for the type to be legible, with words being visible but not necessarily read as anything but I think the outlines here are what makes it a mess, with some overlapping perfectly and some slightly overlapping but not enough to make clear shapes within the overlap. It's not particularly visually intriguing either - I think this idea would be better as either print or letter pressed.


Success!








Outside of the fact that the words are nicely visible and visually stimulating as a result of the textural element, the burnt pattern is incredible! I had no idea it was going to do that but it's fascinating - so true to the words and creates an oddly effective sense of visual depth through the different shades. I have no idea what this looks like once sanded down because I haven't done so but if I use a fixative then I could keep this visual anyway. 
I'm thoroughly enjoying this as a visual and alongside a QR code, could make for a curios poster...









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