Project 4: Typography

Typography version of the Protomen's album cover of "the Protomen"

(Using the album's own lyrics)

Like with the Polaroid collage, I had problems from the beginning. The skyline at the top was incredibly difficult to recreate. Originally it was very jagged and had a lot of edges, and that doesn't translate well into a text box. It was a struggle to fill the outlines sufficiently enough to create the illusion of a skyline. Even now, I'm still not satisfied with it; the space between the last two buildings on the far right sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I believe I should've applied another full layer or partial layer to fill that up. Indeed, the text itself is probably the biggest problem I have with this image. Saving the file so that the text could be preserved and read was nearly impossible. I can't say why that is; it either comes to file type or size, I think, and I can't fathom which is more responsible. Perhaps I'll upload a different version of this image in the future. That's not to say that I dislike the product overall. What I produced is a good recreation of the original album cover, as a quick Google search will surely confirm. It also has vibrant colors, with special emphasis given on the purple. The layering of grey text over the black section is also visually interesting. The grey's presence adds depth and texture.

Putting it there was a pain, though. I used the Type in an Area tool throughout the entire piece. I will admit that I neglected to use the Type on a Path tool. I didn't believe I needed it, as I believed I could get​ by with the Type in Area alone. That may have been a mistake. Yes, the Area text tool worked, but it was a pain to use. I made very sharp and specific edges to my areas, and that made them difficult to populate. The​ text had to be constantly shrunk and later repeated to fill up space. Aside from that irksome tool, I also made use of layers to repeat the lyrics and art boards to crop everything. This project probably used the least amount of tools out of all the other ones I created in this class. I suppose there's something to be said for that.

If I were to start things over, I'd use the Type on Path text tool. It'd make the image look more interesting and polished, I'll bet, to see layer after layer of text rather than a solid block. As it is though, I'd give myself a 6/10 for effort. It was a hairpulling process, and that made it hard to concentrate on it. I wish I had focused a bit more.