Week 10

I attempted two different treatments of text in this assignment. In the first image, I appropriated a poem and treated the text like markings. The words have some resonance and meaning as text, but they are also an integrated component of the visual language. The poem title (Reasons for Admission Not Indexed in ICD-10) refers to a categorization for whether or not someone qualifies as needing healthcare by the state, but when I heard it read aloud it reminded me of reasons to immigrate. “Admission” has that connotation for me right now. So I used the language but changed the context of it, literally layering it over a pixelated map of the U.S.-Mexico border. I had trouble “writing” on the path — my pen tool would only create a shape, rather than a line, which meant that when I typed on the path, it would begin reading from the top edge of my image and the text along the border would be upside-down and backwards. I tried troubleshooting for a while and then got frustrated. If I were to continue working on this piece, I would adjust the text to be along the border. I would also make it more overlapping/obscure, with intentional choice of what words can be read. This iteration is less intentional.

For the second image, I wanted to utilize typography to convey meaning. I want the viewer to imagine a google search — I took a similar font & colors to the logo, and applied it to the first characters in the piece (skipping one color with the “space” character). I wanted every character after the GOOGLE characters to evoke the font/stylings of a search bar, with the suggested italicized “better.”

I’m not sure I made the most effective layout choices for either image. For the first, I wanted to challenge the notion of borders around an image. This works ok when the background is white, but I don’t think it’s a universally-appropriate choice. For the google image, when I tried to save it initially as a jpeg, it cropped strangely and I was intrigued by the composition. Earlier, it was center in a much larger white square. Something about it being partially obscured was very interesting to me, and the scale of the lettering, too. It felt less like a graphic this way. I tried to crop out part of the “h,” but with the white background here it just looks like a different kind of lettering…