I'll start by saying that a brief being called summer project is very misleading, and pretty much depressing. Summer is meant to mean no work, parks, BBQ's, holidays, sunbathing, reading, time wasting, seeing friends, sleeping and generally not doing much. But no! With a summer project this all goes out of the window, well maybe for only the last few weeks when you feel the terror of a deadline a' looming.
Anyway I have been chugging along with my project for about the last four weeks, doing tiny bit everyday and not really getting anywhere fast. The brief is to create an alphabet which shows a response to one or many of our summer experiences. It's pretty open ended, we can create a new typeface or use an unusual method of displaying the alphabet etc. for our final outcome. I decided to base my project on Playmobil, after spending the best part of a week sorting a mountain of it out. After much faffing, I decided to make an interactive alphabet where using a few things you can make many, such as with Playmobil. I decided to make a set of 14 blocks out of wood that could be put together to form the 26 letters of the alphabet, below are the photos;
To make them I used balsa wood which is a very light, easy to cut wood. ( I am yet to drill holes which will allow them to attach together) In addition to this I am also trying to come up with a digital version of this new typeface which can be used as a more practical readable version of the wooden 3D typeface. I am currently really struggling with this aspect of my project. I have tried many different ways of displaying the typeface but none seem to be quite right, well to me anyway. I am tempted to leave my project at just the wooden type but I think it needs something else, something to make the process of arranging the wooden blocks relevant. Below are some sample of the digital typeface;
Hopefully more photos to follow of the final thing! x