The Brief: Read the book “Creative Confidence – Unleashing the creative potential within us all” by Tom Kelley and David Kelley and select one meaningful quote/comment/passage. You must create a composition with custom lettering that is unique and inspiring, modeling off the meaning of the selected quote to communicate to the public. The only colors you can use are White, Black (can print or use black ink or paint), and IDEO aqua green (C 53 / M 4 / Y 33 / K 0).
Results: To arrive at my final concept, I first began by researching and looking at examples of installation typography and I knew I wanted to ideally do something with anamorphic typography.
The next step was reading the book and pulling out quotes that I found interesting and thought could work with my idea. The quote I finally settled on was “Failure sucks, but instructs.” I knew that this would be something I could work with to have shift depending on the viewer’s perspective so that is why I chose it.
I then thought about the best way to show the meaning of the quote and that there is a positive side to failure, and I decided to do that through having one side of the piece read “Failure sucks” and having the other read “Failure instructs.” Color was very important in conveying the meaning as well, so I chose a light gray for the “failure sucks” and the bright IDEO green for the “failure instructs” as I felt those colors best reflected the quote on each side.
The finished piece was designed in Adobe Illustrator, printed onto matte paper, folded into an accordion shape, and then mounted onto foam core board. When I think of the quote, I think that depending on your perspective on failure, you can either seeing it as sucking, or you can take that failure as a lesson and apply that knowledge to something else. So, for the viewer looking at my piece, depending on where they are standing they will either see “Failure sucks” or “Failure instructs”, with the notion that they must keep moving and change their viewpoint in order to see the positive message in the piece. I think this applies to real life too in that we must not get stuck on the “sucky” parts, and must keep moving forward and/or look at things in a new light to see their benefit.
