Typography Experimental Collage

As part of our workshop on experimental layout with text in paragraphs we also played around with typed text as individual letters and typography. These exercises were helpful in showing different ways in which text and layout can communicate an idea to the reader especially in magazines and catalogues. Personally that wasn't where my main field of interest lies, but I do enjoy experimenting with different mediums of art; like with the ink blot work. It was a very interesting and creative process to experiment with, and it was different to my usual method of drawing and creating art with pencil, pen and paper. Despite this, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The collage itself took inspiration from various things; at first I decided to play around with different fonts and lettering into words. This was very much about 'altered states of mind' as I called it myself; so I thought of some words that related to one's mental state and put it all together, and intertwined them like a Scrabble game. It's like an imaginary scenario where the players sat down together and just created words out of the stuff they were feeling. These words are surrounded by snippets of news articles and media - which to me just represents how everything is in your head, and how the media keeps banging about what it wants to and you're just sat there feeling all this stuff in your head.

The words on the page related to mental health, and over the top I cut out snippets of words from magazines to spell out a message; 'she took my heart, left me for dead, and drank my blood, to me, she said...' lyrics from Royal Blood's 'Ten Tonne Skeleton' - which is a line which I think is very powerful and expressive yet so self explanatory. A very emo sort of line, it resonated with me a lot, which is why I included it in this work. It's all about my heartbreak and difficult relationships in the past. It looks rather chaotic and messy - and I intended it to be this way - as it can feel like a traffic jam of thoughts and feelings in your head, so I tried to reflect this in my work.

Using digital software (i.e Photoshop) I also played around using different techniques from my original photo of my collage. By manipulating the contrast, brightness, hue as well levels and curves, I created a range of different effects to make it look more scary and abstract, or intentionally with a lesser colour range. My personal favourite is the sixth one, with the red and jet-black contrast; it looks particularly menacing and dark yet bold and in-your-face.