Adjectives:
- modern
- diverse
- tribute
- vocal
- bold
- historic
Summary:
Inspired by the Memphis sanitation strike
Martin.
Designed by Tre Seals
In order to tell stories of neglect
While breaking stereotypical borders of design
The straightforward and human centered type
Introduces diversity and empathy within typography
Martin.
Essay:
Graphic designer Tre Seals, specializing in the areas of branding, print, design, and typography, was on a constant journey to find inspiration and eventually had the hobby become a skill. Seals recognizes 84% of all designers in America are white and until recently, the majority of all designers in America were men. Diversity has always been a neglected issue in the design industry and Vocal is here to shout it loud. Seals decided to find a way to increase diversity and empathy in the design industry through the introduction of a non-stereotypical piece of minority into the design itself, starting with the basis of design: typography. Seals created the project Vocal Type, specializing in the recreation and adaptation of typography made for cause and advocacy marketing efforts throughout world history in hopes of creating a global aesthetic.
February 12th, 1968. Workers–majority of them Black–demanded recognition for their union, better wages, and safer working conditions. This was called the Memphis sanitation strike, carried by the followers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As they marched, the strike gained national attention, workers carried copies of a poster declaring “I AM A MAN”. Nobody knows for sure how the sign idea originated. Supposedly it was a collaboration of union officials and civil rights activists. About 400 posters were printed in a church print shop.
In 2016, under designer Seal’s project of Vocal Type, the font Martin was designed based on these protest signs. Vocal Type beliefs are straight-forward and human-centered. “People Matter. Design Matters. You Matter” is VT’s motto. A tribute to historic movements and people that disrupted the system, Vocal Type is an editorial design typography which looks at The Black Civil Rights Movement and its influence on typography, celebrating diversity and challenges judicial industries during the time period.
Spread:
Readability:
Initially I was looking at Open sans as the typeface for the essay portion of the spread, as I printed and explored more iterations I tried Andale mono as another option. I began enjoying the cohesiveness of Martin and Andale. Since the historic value of Martin is one of the most interesting things about the font, I wanted the essay portion to visually reflect that. Andale gives the typewriter visual which most audiences correlate to the time frame of which the Martin was inspired by.
Thumbnails:
When thumb-nailing I had ideas of emphasizing certain elements in the word “Martin” and having the well-known quotes imbedded into the spread.
Spreads First Iteration:
Mistakes:
- After printing out the first “batch” of iterations I realized when on paper, the color choice made readability difficult.
- The text goes over the page which will be hidden when printed
- A lot of the graphic elements are too large in comparison to the font size of the information
- The font size “12” looks good on letter size but on tabloid is way too big: looks almost cartoony
Continuing Iterations:
After receiving feedback about my spreads I realized a lot of the design choices I decided on resembled a poster design rather than a spread for a book page. The text was largely sectioned off in only two “chunks”, and since I chose the Andale, a monospaced sans serif, it made the readability of the spread very difficult.
Another aspect of the spread which made it look much more poster-like was the graphic elements, such as the 1968 and large blocks of black. Rather than emphasizing the readability it actually distracted from the text.
https://www.typewolf.com/top-10-monospaced-fonts
Following this I backtracked and focused on the splitting of text. After receiving feedback from Vicki I checked out websites which used mono fonts and got inspired from it. I split my two blocks of text into 3 main ones and from those I split into subsections (similar to the exercise we did for the poster). I realized there can be a split for dates and another section for information about designer Tre Seals. I also went through my essay and created subsections below the information of Tre Seals to follow a “timeline”. So I made the information to follow “seals recognized, seals decided, seals created”.
Using these sectioned blocks of text I created more iterations and created my final spread.
The final spread I made the name martin to stretch across 12 columns on the left. I put the first part of the essay to the left and let the image go across the pages to let the readability go from left to right and be more cohesive rather than two separate pages. Taking Vicki’s advice I sat the image of Martin Luther King Jr. on a solid shape to prevent it to look like its floating. Going to the right pages I aligned the information with the left column of the second page. I aligned the second solid shape to the end of the third block of text.
Final Spread:
Animation:
Storyboard:
Script:
The Civil Rights Movement…
1968
Memphis sanitation strike
followers of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. marched,
400 posters reading..
I AM A MAN
Inspired by this….
In order to tell stories of neglect
breaking stereotypical borders of design..
Martin.
Tall x-height
1 weight
1 Designer
Designer Tre Seals..
Under the project Vocal type
Published 2016
straightforward human centered type
Introduces diversity and empathy within typography.
People matter, design matters
Modern Avocational Reborn Timeless Innovational Nonviolent
Martin.
Song Choice:
For my song choice I decided to go with Martin wave “deux” since it has a strong build up, beginning with a serious tone and ending with a louder more energetic beat.
(I had exporting issues until the final so I only have screenshots)
First Introduction:
I began making a composition, starting from a black screen and having white text with 50% opacities which would come to 100% opacities on specific beats. I also used the shape layer element throughout the animation to mimic the original poster which underlined “AM”
Screen change from black mask to white:
At 19:10 the screen switches from a black background to a white background, this is the first beat drop and I use the same placements of “I am a man” to do this transition.
First Image introduction:
Following this is the first image which comes in, I do a slow zoom to go with the music.
Feedback from Vicki: Having one image throughout the whole video could be awkward so later having another image would be good.
Starting at 26:22 is the descriptions of the typeface, until this point it was the history and meaning of the typeface. I however didn’t include any information about physical elements such as x height and such since it is not relevent to the typeface.
First time typeface name is mentioned: 34:02
The first mention of the name of the typeface is introduced at 34:02, the second beat drop. I wanted a slow build up towards this with the historical values.
Second image:
Following this is a second image which is initially in black and white and each poster comes into color through the beats. I thought this would be a good element to add since it shows another image towards the end, shows the typeface in use as a poster, and also shows reasoning to the red color choices I made previously.
(photoshop tutorial from Andrew to do the red on black background)
Closing scene:
Leading up to this closing scene is the 6 adjectives which describe Martin, I used the same starting alphabet and lowered the opacity of the rest of the words to reveal martin. I was lucky with the song as the it had 10 beats. I was able to read out the text “people matter” “design matters” along the 4 beats and with the rest of the 6 I revealed the adjectives.
Second and Last time typeface name is mentioned:
Having the typeface’s name mentioned only twice gives my animation a dramatic feature, having it constantly mentioned, in my opinion, may make it repetitive and not as exciting as having it more mysterious. The animation closes on this red scene which reads the typeface.
Final Video:
Project Reflection:
In the beginning I was rather unconfident in my spread designs, I think I was primed to the poster project and kept creating poster-like design choices. I realized as I created more iterations, it let me practice and understand a spread is not for aesthetics but rather for readability and aid for the audience to be motivated to read the information on the page. I think picking Andale Mono for the essay portion was a very hard choice but good choice. It allowed be to keep iterating and practice with monospaced typography.(I made a total of 80 iterations). I think what I learned in just a few weeks is really valuable. I was able to comprehend and digest what a spread is made for through my feedbacks from Vicki. And through each lab session, Andrew allowed me to get very comfortable with Adobe softwares.
For the animation, I actually enjoy using after effects, I was largely inspired by kinetic typography: such as apple advertisements. I am glad I had fun while still being under pressure. I think this project was my favorite in design so far. I also enjoyed re-learning after effects with Andrew this mini, since I was remote all of last year I had no chance to really “learn” after effects and honestly missed a lot of the after effects sessions since my time zone didn’t match with EST.
Thank you for this great mini :)
