OUGD403 Design Development

I started out with my designs by looking at the weight distribution in the letterforms, making hight contrast I think shows more edge and the element of surprise. Taking helvetica and putting in the contrast in weight really changes the letterforms. i think this idea is too basic at the moment and it doesnt show much personality. 

Using bodoni i made some minor adjustments on the serifs by making them more elongated as if they were jumping, and then looked into not having the letters sit on the baseline so they are jumping in random directions. 

I tried to take of the serifs to show fright and a quick jump, although i think this idea is effective it does not show the personality i was hoping to get across. 

Looking into little jumps when you are shocked I added in serifs of different verities to play with this idea.

adding serifs onto capital letters made me realise that I should do my alphabet in capital letters because the impact of them conveys shock. 

Making the counters smaller to make more of a block look to the letters, this doesn't really show surprise but the impact is there. 

Cutting off sections of the letterforms, illustrates the act of dropping something in shock.

I decided to look into illustrating an idea rather than just changing something in the letterform, the third one down shows a shaky line looking into what happens to your body when you go into shock and shake. Also the more geometric ideas show jumps and shocks in the letterforms. 

I looked into making a larger gap from the tittle to signify a jump, this works quite well but as only a couple of letters have a tittle I don't think this rule would be good for a whole alphabet. 

Using more a more illustrative approach I pushed the idea of being shocked and breaking something further as i think this idea is effective, it clearly has a personality behind it but it isn't too obvious until you look at the context behind it. 

pushing the idea further i looked into how a plate would look if it was smashed and put this into letterforms. 

Crit

From my crit I was told that I should push the illustrative letterforms further so they are more bold and outstanding, currently they are reasonably safe and not that interesting. I also now need to take my designs into digital mediums in order to start refining into a final outcome. 

to develop my designs further i need to look into questions such as, How can you be surprised?? jumped, you drop something, surprised with good news or a surprise, surprised with bad news, scream, wide mouthed expression. 

Here are some letterforms which I tried to push the boundaries illustration, I think these look somewhat abstracted, the element of surprise can be seen but i think i am more drawn to the smashing plates idea.