IvyPresto
C Mini, Project 3
Subject: IvyPresto typeface
Time Frame: 3 Weeks
Part 0: Background
Research:
Short Summary: Danish designer Jan Maack was inspired by 16th century Belgian punchcutter Hendrik van den Keere’s Canon Roman or Double Pica Roman typeface (specifically in its usage to typeset music) to create IvyPresto. IvyPresto is not a revival but a “regeneration” of the old typeface. It creates a harmony of the original gothic and roman type elements, along with music built into the typeface, to create something that is beautiful and elegant, but also alive.
Analyzing Type:
- Expressive terminals
- Tight kerning
- Bracketed serifs
- Tall x-height
- Large contrast
- Vertical stress axises (although downstrokes have an angled stress)
- Long, thin counters
Part 1: Type Spread
Typesetting:
Typesetting IvyPresto Text Thin:
- 10 pt. font size
- 14 pt. leading
- 0p8 after paragraph spacing
After mama-bear/papa-bearing many different printed pages of the type, I decided that the most comfortable for magazine-style reading was 10/14 font with 8 point gap between paragraphs.
However, after some more staring at my page, I decided that I needed something different than IvyPresto for my body copy. The text paired with itself feels sort of monotonous or one-tone. To look for a sans serif pairing, I went back to the Type Network page on IvyPresto, where a couple fonts are recommended (assumably by the designer). The font I was interested in, Nitti Grotesk, was not immediately available on Adobe Fonts, but a simple search based on screen shot gave me an approximate of what I was looking for.
I decided on Stevie Sans for its rounder look, once again contrasting with the long, thin counters of IvyPresto.
Typesetting Stevie Sans Book:
- 8 pt. font size
- 12.5 pt. leading
- 0p6 after paragraph spacing
I think that the inclusion of a sans serif makes the page feel more modern, and “modern elegance” is something I’m going for. The serif of IvyPresto across the entire spread just felt like too much. Restraint is something that I’m trying to go for and I think the sans serif also gives this look of restraint.
Making the Spread:
Problem: I don’t actually have a lot of text to work with — something of my own fault. Meaning, I can’t rely upon the text to guide me through the process of making the page, which was sort of my original plan. I have about as much text as I would have in a single image size. So, I’m approaching the text like I would go about placing an image.
I want to create a modern but elegant feel, so I want to be very cognizant of the grid and white space. My impression of elegant design is a careful and conscious use of the whitespace in a page — it doesn’t feel cramped. Restraint is key here.
Despite the best interest of my initial sketches, they just look… sort of boring. I was mostly intrigued by the bar lines and the G clef (which is a glyph in the font) spanning the page, so for my explorations, I went with that.
It is at this point that Medium decided I’m no longer allowed to manage images, so bear with me with the formatting on this one.
Out of these, I liked the balance that having two G-clefs gave to the page and the colored background behind the clef. To me, the color blocking really adds a more modern feel to the design, which is something I enjoy. I still feel that these spreads are lackluster though. Elegance doesn’t have to mean that the design doesn’t have a kick to it. For example, VOGUE always reads as elegant, but it still draws you in — it’s not boring.
I tried working with an image as well, but I wasn’t particularly feeling how it was looking placed within the page layout.
That “kick” was the thing I was looking for going into creating my next set of spreads. I did this mainly through playing with color. Although, to say I “played” might be a bit of an exaggeration. I really struggled with colors.
For the last formal crit on our spreads, I turned in this version of the spread with monochrome blue. It’s not quite the navy I was playing with, and the result is dull to say the least.
The layout is okay and, again, the color is a bit unfortunate. But I didn’t want to tackle the spread at this point and I wanted to move on to making the animation, so move on I did.
Later, once I was thoroughly into creating my animation, I worked on my spread again so I could nail down the colors while going through the animation. I landed on working with green, but a deep one, siding on a bluer side, so less of a forest green. Then, I brought back a warm gray, like I had in my initial attempts at the spread.
For my final spread submission, I submitted this version with the green and warm grey. I think it’s alright. It doesn’t quite have the interest that I want from it, but I plan to work on that later once the class is finished and I can just toy around with it on my own time.
I think I’m going to try to add back in that color blocked background that I was trying earlier. I think I will also try making the middle block of text lower, like I had it in my earlier spread. I think I like the look of that better. But overall, I think the spread is very workable.
Part 2: Type Animation
Music:
I began the animation with the most important part of any motion graphics: my music. I talked with Jessica Lai on where she found her music, because I knew I wanted a similar quartet / string orchestra feel. She found her music from the Bromeliad Music Library, which is all free use.
First, I started listening to the upbeat section within the library, but the feel of that was too “Great British Bake Off” for me. Onwards, I listened to every track in the dramatic/serious section. Out of these 62 tracks, my favorites were:
- Heavy peace (60)
- Floating Room
- Mirror Form
- Palace Intrigue
- Pollen Estate
- Outer Accelerator
- Blue Morpho
- Mental Archery
- As a Perfectionist
Specifically, I was between Heavy Peace(60), Floating Room, and Palace Intrigue. Ultimately, I went with Palace Intrigue for its modern step-beat and its fast tempo (which lends itself well to a typeface named Presto — one of the fastest standard tempo markings in music).
Analyzing the piece, I found that it is in 3/4 time, major, and had approximately six different sections. Using these six sections, I structured my storyboard creation.
Script and Storyboarding:
Next was creating the framework for my animation: the script and storyboard. I approached creating a script as a part of making the storyboard.
I never quite finished my drawn storyboard, but I felt motivated to start my video and I moved to Illustrator pretty quickly to create more storyboard scenes.
Using this, I started animating. The animation itself wasn’t particularly hard, just time consuming. However, this is where things went a bit downhill.
After animating 30 second of this version, I just wasn’t happy with what I was producing at all. It was fine, and plenty of my classmates told me so, but I don’t like making things that are just fine. Honestly, I would rather make bad work, so that I knew I could improve on it, than make work that’s just fine. I would rather create no work than work that is just fine. I don’t know how to fix “fine”. And what I really want from my work is to make people feel something (which at least bad work does). No one has ever loved something that is just fine. Worst of all, no one was giving me real critique. All the classmates I went to were generally positive about the video, but positive in a way that felt to me like “hey, at least you made something!”.
So, I started over. I went with almost a new concept entirely. Was this shooting myself in the foot? Sure, but I knew that I could do this video right and be proud of it.
With this new version, I worked really hard to come up with an initial opening sequence that would be more intriguing for a viewer. I noticed that most people started their video with either adjectives or a date, either historical or of-creation. Having struggled with the date format, I decided to work with adjectives. Taking some inspiration from my spread, I started the video with a clef glyph and musical bar lines. This gave me the format I needed to get started.
From my opening, I just… kept animating. I didn’t storyboard, and I jotted down potential script point in my notes as they came to me. Any line that I came up with that I liked the sound of gotten written down, in no particular order (this is sort of how I write poetry too). Then, as I progressed through animating, I would pick a new line from my potential script to add in. Sometimes, when I would think of a progression, I would add the static text directly into AfterEffects and position it where I thought it should go. Using this method of animating and retconning the script, I got through my entire animation.
Overall, I’m really happy with how my final animation came out. I think it was the right decision to start over. The final animation I turned in is really something that I am proud of. With a little bit of tweaking, I can make it into a really excellent video to live in my portfolio for a couple years.
Reflection:
For the spread, I think my biggest challenge was definitely color. I’ve known I’ve struggled with color in the past, but it was particularly bad in this assignment. I think going forward, I’m definitely going to look into more color education. I didn’t have time in my schedule for Mark Mencer’s color class, but I wonder if there are any other color theory classes I could take, maybe through the school of art? I really admire Yoo Sung’s color, and I know he makes a pinterest board specifically for colors he likes, so maybe I’ll try doing that as well. That way, even if I can’t come up with colors on my own, I have ideas to pull from.
For the animation, I think that, for whatever reason, the storyboard creation is what threw me off. I felt that once I had something written down that I should stick to that and it was hard to deviate because I had already thought of something. For my second attempt, I found myself much more willing to experiment with the progression of my video without the storyboard. I definitely see the value in storyboards and I want to learn how to include them in my process eventually, I just don’t think I’m at that point creatively.
Another thing that gave me trouble when doing my animation was just the sheer scale of AfterEffects as a whole. I felt overwhelmed and at a loss when animating simply because I didn’t know what was available to me. I defaulted to making words pop up on screen because that’s what I knew how to do… but that’s not the look I wanted. I often do this to myself when I code as well. I limit myself on my vision because I just don’t know what’s available to me or how to create it. Now that I’ve worked with AfterEffects more, and seeing what my classmates did, I feel more comfortable approaching the program with more of an open mind. I think that the longer I work with the program and the more content I consume related to it, the more comfortable I will become.
