Bethany Schilling

buzz-schilling: Skeleton hand-drawing in biro.

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 18:44:46 -0500

buzz-schilling:

Skeleton hand-drawing in biro.

buzz-schilling: Lucy Pinder drawing

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 09:14:02 -0500

buzz-schilling:

Lucy Pinder drawing

buzz-schilling: John Lennon drawing

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 09:13:35 -0500

buzz-schilling:

John Lennon drawing

an-editors-eye: Grammar glamour from Mental Floss.

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:01:30 -0400

an-editors-eye:

Grammar glamour from Mental Floss.

The Significance Of Numbers: Visual Solution.

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:32:39 -0400

The Significance Of Numbers.

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 05:45:00 -0400

5th October.

Our first brief is called ‘The Significance Of Numbers’ and we have been asked to design a piece of work that demonstrates this, using any media we wish.

I had a few initial thoughts but came up with 3 main ideas. The first is looking at the inter-relationship of numbers and orthography; in particular script languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. There are a number of alphabets, such as Spanish and French, which are based on the Latin alphabet, but contain additional characters. For example, the Spanish language is based on the Latin alphabet (26 characters), but it contains one additional letter: ‘eñe’ (ñ). The French language is also based on the Latin alphabet and it contains 5 diacritics and 2 orthographic ligatures. Unlike Spanish, these are not considered as separate letters. I thought about creating an info-graphic illustrating different alphabets within languages, and the additional characters they have.

The second idea I had was to create something based on numeric glyphs. These are either proportional uppercase & lowercase, and monospaced uppercase & lowercase. Monospaced numbers have a uniform width, making them useful for displaying numbers in columns. Proportional numbers, on the other hand, have individual widths and are preferred for sentences. Number case features specify a choice for the appearance of digits, and are independent of letter case. Lowercase numbers are digits whose optical height is the same as that of the lower case letters and can have both ascenders and descenders. Upper case numbers on the other hand have neither ascenders or descenders, meaning that all digits are usually the same height as the capital letters. My idea for this was to illustrate these numbers somehow; showing the contrast between proportional & monospaced and lowercase & uppercase numbers.

I then thought about the anatomy of typography and how each character must have dimensions somehow. My first thought was of an ampersand and I tried to visualise in my head how it is constructed mathematically. When I had my tutorial with Sally, she mentioned something called ‘Unicode’, which basically means that every letter, every number, every glyph and so on has a digital code which enables technology to read it.

“Consistent encoding representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world’s writing systems…The Unicode Standard: 110,000 characters covering 100 scripts…Unicode [is] implemented by different character encodings…[its] explicit aim of transcending limitations of traditional character encodings, such as those defined by the ISO 8859 standard”.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode

I thought that this was the idea I should take forward and I have begun my research into Unicode.

8th October.

I started looking into Unicode and found it really interesting how there are so many codes for each character/glyph; such as various HTML ‘entities’ and binary and so on. My ultimate favourite glyph of all time is the ampersand, so I looked into codes unique to that.

I then came across something called ‘The Mathematics of Golden Ratio Typography’ and found this very interesting too. It took me a while to get my head around it before I started playing around with visuals. These are based on several equations; beginning with font size (f) and line height (l) being proportionally related through a ratio (h): l=fh. It continues with how typographic dimensions correspond to each other…

(My brain is only slightly frazzled from information overload, so I’m not explaining this as well as I usually would. Do excuse me for a minute).

After I had accumulated all this knowledge I was still struggling to find a way to visualise something. I was doodling in my notebook until I had somewhat of an epiphany - maybe I was trying too hard? I drew an ampersand with one of my brush pens and listed some codes next to it. I looked at it and realised what a lovely visual it was. (I’m taking ‘good’ and ‘nice’ out of my blogging vocabulary, by the way). I fired up Illustrator and transferred this sketch digitally. I wanted to create a strong visual contrast between the image and the codes; so naturally a large, ornamental ampersand next to some Monaco is fitting.

9th October.

After I presented my idea to Sally, she gave me a piece of advice whereby you do the same thing six different ways. She liked my idea, but suggested I make the coding text in script, and the ampersand in a coding font. I’ve had a play around with it and have made three posters so far, using Monaco, Courier New and Chopin Script.

Rationale behind my idea:

My poster looks at the interrelationship between typography and numbers; in particular coding. During my research I learnt about something called Unicode which is consistent encoding representation of text in most of the world’s writing systems. I then started experimenting with visuals and I came up with my final idea whilst doodling in my notebook. I drew an ampersand and listed some code next to it, and realised that this could potentially work for my poster, as it illustrates both a visual representation and a ‘behind the scenes’ one. I wanted to demonstrate how numbers are so important even when we can’t see them. I decided to go for my original idea as I didn’t want to over-complicate things.

Visuals to follow soon.

VisCom Year 3.

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 10:58:40 -0400

Shit just got real.

Boy George (in progress)

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:11:00 -0400

Bird (2)

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:00:00 -0400

Bird (1)

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:59:00 -0400

Personal Favourite

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:05:24 -0400

More Close Up Photos

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:59:12 -0400

Close Up Photos

Fri, 11 May 2012 09:52:00 -0400

My Illustrated Book Of Lovely Smells: Photos

Thu, 10 May 2012 12:29:45 -0400

Ok, here are my photos of my book.

Apologies for the slanted ones, I have spent 9 hours staring at this screen & can’t actually deal with any more Photoshop right now.

Group Critique (Presentation)

Sat, 05 May 2012 17:49:53 -0400

Yesterday I had a group critique, which was more of a presentation of what we’ve produced a week before hand in.

I sent my book to print on Thursday night, so I presented two PDFs of my book (the main content and the front cover).

The feedback I received was very good, people have recently commented that I have a distinct illustration style which is such a lovely compliment.

People have questioned why I haven’t included actual physical smells into my book; there are three reasons for this:

A combination of smells would merge into one very odd (and presumably unpleasant) scent. That’s not what I’m going for.
Paper does not retain scent unless it’s ‘scratch & sniff’. Living on a student budget, there is no way I have the financial ability to do this.
It’s an illustration book.

Neil Mabbs felt that the screen printed illustrations don’t ‘smell’ as much as the other drawings, as they are only one colour. The reason why I made some screen printed images is because it’s a technique I want to improve on. However, I have taken this comment into account and I will make some more Marlboro/Polo illustrations in ink. (The ones in my sketchbook are really rough).

More Market Research

Fri, 04 May 2012 07:42:00 -0400

1. Hato Press

“At Hato Press we believe in the innate pleasure of making things and encourage others to join us. We also like trees and that’s why we only stock recycle paper in house”.

Hato Press are a ‘speciality printing and publishing house’. I think it’s wonderful that there are companies who still believe in the beauty of hand printing and I think this is the appropriate market for my book.

The “ABCDEFRUITS & VEGETABLES” illustrations (see first screen shot) look as though they have been initially screen printed. The target audience is parents, and the fact that the images have this tactile quality makes it friendly and approachable for children. Because it looks hand made, children are more able to relate to it on a personal level. If the images were made digitally, it would not have this effect.

2. Etsy.com

“Etsy is the world’s handmade market place”

(So you can see why I love it.)

“Our mission is to empower people to change the way the global economy works. We see a world in which very-very small businesses have much-much more sway in shaping the economy, local living economies are thriving everywhere, and people value authorship and provenance as much as price and convenience. We are bringing heart to commerce and making the world more fair, more sustainable, and more fun.”

Thinking about my book and where it would possibly sell, I think the above two places are the right kind of market for it. Hato Press specialises in screen and hand printing processes, and Etsy stock a lot of hand made books and journals. I think my book would appeal to men and women (around the ages of 18 - 35 perhaps) who have creative and artistic interests and hobbies. That’s my guess anyway!

Front Cover

Fri, 04 May 2012 07:41:33 -0400

This is a scanned & edited (brightened) image of my front cover.

I decided to make a purely typographic front cover because my book is obviously heavily illustrated, & I wanted to create a balance. Also, I am always trying to improve my typographic skills as it’s something I love to do & a very worthwhile practice to be able to do well.

I have posted this initial piece on a previous post, whereby I sketched it out free hand onto graph paper. As I mentioned, the kerning is not consistent. This is of course something I need to practice & develop, but I think it kind of works in this particular context. My book is something very tactile & personal, so I wanted to create everything (type & images) as hand rendered as possible.

I decided to screen print my title because it is another technical process I would like to improve on. It’s also something I love doing. I chose a magenta ink because it’s obviously bright & attractive; a black front cover would not look as warm & inviting.
The typography is based on a font called “FFF Tusj” which I came across whilst scrolling through my font menu. It’s bold & sketchy, which I thought was perfect for my front cover.

I had a bit of trouble with my initial prints, for some reason the bottom part of the text did not expose properly? So I had to re do it all which took all day & I only had about 3 decent prints out of 15. But I suppose that’s all part of the learning process. It’s all about too much ink, too little ink, too much pressure, too little pressure…usually these kinds of ‘accidents’ work in your favour, but because the typography is so particular (with the lines running through the letters) the correct amount of ink and pressure is key in ensuring a perfect print. Due to working to such a tight deadline, I used the best print, scanned it in & brightened it on Photoshop.

I made a secondary typographic piece for my name (“by Bethany Schilling”). I used the same font to keep it looking consistent, but drew it in black, so not to distract from the title.

This is a screen shot of my front cover as a whole:

Photo

Wed, 02 May 2012 13:15:43 -0400

Title (My Illustrated Book of Lovely Smells)

Tue, 01 May 2012 10:09:00 -0400

I sketched this out freehand with pencil onto graph paper, then went back into it with biro. Just to give it a real hand rendered feel to it.

And I know, the kerning is slightly off, but…it was never meant to be absolutely perfect.
(Which is why I quite like it).

Thumbnails

Tue, 01 May 2012 10:01:00 -0400

A page of thumbnails instead of a regular contents page.
Just to give the reader some little abstract visual clues.

There are two more to come, either: curry, porridge or toastie.