a2Z

2 | a2z

Introduction

Think you know your ABCs? Think again!

What distinguishes artists is not their skill with a pencil or cutting wood, but rather how they can see something others take to be common and mundane in an utterly uncommon and exciting way. Drawing or sculpting is simply how artists convince others to see the world through their eyes. How do you see the alphabet, and how can you express that vision?

In new media, pixels and vectors are our means, and text is a major part of that world. While this is also true for graphic design, the use of text on the web yields a quite different set of permissions and limitations. We’ll learn how to use them, as well as how to develop a strong relationship between words and images. 

Heidi Cody, American Alphabet, 2000

Objectives

After completing this project you will be able to:

  • understand and use knowledge about the origins of letterforms to re-imagine this common visual phenomenon
  • understand and use the principles of web typography
  • decide, from among the variety of standard web image file types, which to use in a certain context 
  • organize media assets locally using Adobe Bridge and in the cloud via an image host
  • use Photoshop and Illustrator techniques to optimize images for the web and to create text-as-image and word-image objects
  • abstract a set of elements using photography, drawing, or a combination, and order them into a coherent presentation via blog, website, and social media
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