Communications Studio I
Music Selection
Trying to find music was very difficult. I did not really know what vibe I should go for whether it be jazzy, pop, or slow. Right now, some song that I want to use are “Camel” by Lbandy Music and “Hustle On” by Evidence. I like these three because I think they have a strong beginning.
This song has a joyous and celebratory feel to it maybe because of the clapping in the background but it may be a bit slow so I’m not sure about it. It is also a little repetitive and the ending is not as dramatic as I hope.
This song has a really good beginning and I can see the animation having an interesting start because of it. It is still upbeat, but it doesn’t quite have as much celebratory nature to it than “Camel”. I also think that there isn’t a natural ending to the song so the animation could feel unfinished.
youtube.com/watch?v=q-cUrmOekeY
This song has a good beginning, but it feels the same the entire time and there are no points where anything changes and I’m worried that if I used this song the animation would feel too redundant.
Video Script
In my initial script, I don’t think that I focused enough on the history of the typeface.
While writing the script, I realized that I wanted to tell the story of how the type came to be and why it is important in design history for most of the time.
Storyboard
The main point of this project is that it is a kinetic type project. Communicate the story through the movement of type and be careful about excessive use of imagery and illustrations.
Looking at my storyboard, I think that I should figure out a way to have the text in the beginning to not just appear, but to have personality that relates to the word done through motion. Right now, I’m also not sure if the animation has a celebratory feeling. I also need to think about the color, specifically how it transitions and how to include more colors in addition to the orange such as the primaries that Du Bois used in his data visualizations.
Find music that celebrates Black culture from the early 1900’s or take it to the other end of hip hop and Black music in the present day. I think that I am going to try to find these specifically and see if they can work. In terms of the storyboard, be more creative with the placement of images. Include more history and think about how the handwritten type can transition into the type created by Seals. Analysis of the glyphs is probably not necessary. The type is more based on history and analyzing them may not add anything to the animation.
My next steps are to listen to some music, edit my storyboard and think about how to transition on a greater scale from history to present day and also how to transition from one scene to the next.
First Run Through
In my first run through, I needed to place elements in the correct time according to the music. The main things that I want to focus on is the transitions, the personification of the adjectives in the beginning, and how the longer phrases read on screen. Right now, I don’t feel as though the type is moving at the correct pace with the music because there are some awkward moments that I don’t know how to fill up.
Yoshi Crit:
- The words appear too fast on the screen and is unreadable.
- Follow a grid
- The transition of the D into Du Bois could be replaced with something more reminiscent of my spread.
- Sociologist, Activist, Designer section seems off, like with the music.
- Transitions aren’t consistent: Students at Black universities to the infographics doesn’t need a circle to scale up because it leads eye to the corners and forces it to move up to the text.
- Georgia could be in the background. Think about how it can appear without being in the center of the page.
- Zooming into the infographics may not be necessary and having “depicting black history, racism, and progress” on top of the infographic could compete with attention and the viewer may not even notice it. Think about how to explain what the infographics showed.
- Overall, follow a grid so elements align and is cohesive and think about adding slight grain to make it more reminiscent of the time period.
I showed my in progress animation to some of my classmates and they provided with a lot of feedback that I will probably implement.
- Firstly, they said that the reveal of the “D” is unclear similar to what Yoshi said. When I changed it to repeat “Du Bois” like my spread, they said that it was redundant. To fix this, I think that I may align the “Du Bois” and highlight the letters to spell “Bois” and transition that into the next scene.
- I was struggling with timing for the “students at HBCU” scene and they suggested to slow it down and make it more readable, I should immediately show the text and have the outline of Georgia be drawn with a mask and transition that into the next scene.
- They also said that while it is interesting to show the transition from the hand drawn type to the typeface created by Tre Seals, I should not include a zooming effect into the infographics because it does not fit with the rest of the animation because of how slow the zooming is, and it takes up too much time and is difficult to read the “Black ___ in America” section so I think that I should immediately show the infographics close up instead of zooming in which would leave time for viewers to read the text.
Vicki Crit:
- Take a step back and reevaluate what you are trying to communicate
- Some of the transitions and way of communication is not appropriate for the context and content.
- Readability is a big issue
- Composition of some needs to be reevaluated because there is too much competition.
The beginning sequence evolved from the beginning because I was trying to incorporate elements of my spread into the video but I don’t think that it was worth trying to do because the composition was very different from the other scenes, and the idea that I had to rotate it into the next scene would have taken too much time that is not allotted for in the video. In the end, I had the “Du Bois” come in from the four different sides halfway and have it finally revealed in the next scene.
The next thing that I needed to fix was the photograph of W.E.B. Du Bois. I had to photoshop this photo a lot to create a background color. I think that this photo was the way to go because it filled the entire composition and felt classy yet not out of place.
The incorporation of the students at Black college was really difficult for me because there was a lot I wanted to include, but I decided that in the end, they were not the most essential part in the making of the font and so I decided to shorten the copy and include a photo that again, filled the entire composition so that it would fit in with everything else. I didn’t know what photo to use, but as I was reading through the book of all of his infographics, I saw photos of some students at Atlanta University and upon further googling, I found a picture of Du Bois with students at Atlanta University so I photoshopped it so it would fit and used that.
The only part of this animation that I did not know what to do was the incorporation of Tré Seals. In the end, I just used a photo of him, but I wish I had time to think of a more creative way to include him in it.
I wanted the ending to be very simple and be somewhat an analysis of the typeface itself because 1.) I had too much time left to include anything else and 2.) I wanted to emphasize the geometric nature of the font. So, I created outlines of the type in illustrator and extracted the counters and corners and made it appear to the beat of the music. This was probably my most favorite part of my animation because it is just so satisfying to see and it visually stands out from the other parts just enough.
I think that this project was a great culmination of everything I learned from this class in order to communicate in the most effective way possible. I was a bit stubborn in the middle because I didn’t want to cut down on the text, but I realized that it was more important for the story to be told in a clear way and that would not have been possible if there was too much text on the screen. This project was fun and I hope to be able to do something similar like this again in the future.
