Typography - Week 8

Lecture 

It as a Saturday replacement class. Essentially it was a session of critiquing each other's ad. And then was given the instructions for the next assignment.

Type arrangement (30%)
Task 1 (10%): The Letter
In this task, you will write (type) a single page love letter to your beloved who has been abroad for the last 6 months. The year is 1986, the world wide web or internet isn’t yet available to the masses, however the desktop computer has been invented. Letters are still a popular means to send and receive news. As, such it has been your practice to write one letter a week on your new desktop computer, print it, seal it in an envelop and post it to your beloved. This single page letter must be written sensibly and sensitively.

Your task is to use Adobe Illustrator to format this letter in a classical letter writing format (in the days of old) – when letter writing was done by hand – using a suitable font (or a combination of fonts), and appropriate margins, alignment, point size, leading and line length.

You will be required to print two copies; one without creases or folds, the other for postage. The letter for posting will require an envelop, as such thought must be put into the writing of the address on the envelop. You will post this letter to yourself, and you will bring this letter to class for submission and discussion. You will as always document all the processes, drafts and the final results on your eportfolio.

   
Above: Classical letter samples

Important reading references:
Purdue: Common Letter Writing Formats
Good Letter Writing: Personal Letter Writing TemplateGood Letter Writing: Layouts

(Note* If you stumble on some additional references, do share the on our Facebook group).

Marking Criteria: Lorem Ipsum…

Duration: 2 weeks
Deadline: week 10

Primary Research:

I came up with 3 drafts as possible final outcomes:

Cedarville Cursive

Nimbus Mono

Popsies

Secondary Research:

Feedback:

My feedback from the last assignment was to mainly be more aware of my sizing, because I got that wrong. 

Experience:

I had fun writing the letter. It was the easiest part to accomplish, once I figured out how to compose the whole piece. I cultivated a character to write the letter from. I look forward to posting it, to myself. 

Observations:

I find this assignment to be the most fun so far. This time I went outside my options of font families available on my laptop and searched for some online. It took awhile to find hand writing's/font types that were able to portray my letter the way I saw fit, in 3 different ways. 

Findings:

It was a little hard for me to find old love letters from the 1980's. I found a few, that were unreadable. For inspiration, I reverted back to the "love" letters that were used as example for the assignment, in the instructions.  It was interesting to find that none of them were "love letters" at all. 

One of them was a letter about a student wanting to withdraw from her law course.
And another was a letter from the first African-American female who went to university in America.

This was when I figured the interesting illusion of a "love letter". Noticing that the examples were not actually love letters, made me be more aware of how to make a letter look romantic (or whatever tone I wanted to show) by it's presentation.