The theme for this term’s classes is text. Artists have used text in a wide variety of ways, and not always legibly. Think of Picasso’s use of newspapers in his collages, or Michaux’s development of asemic writing (week 2). Of course then there is illustration which uses text as the inspiration and comic books which marry words and images to create something else. We will look at all these are more during this term.
For our first session we focused on inventing our own fonts. It feels odd but all the text we use on our computers, phones, in our books, will have been designed at some point. So why rely on other people’s designs when we can create our own?
I showed the children some ways of making our own fonts using different mark making instruments (mascara brushes, pen and ink, pieces of card) as well as more experimental techniques such as the string sandwich method – see here for an amazing demonstration of this. Another way which never fails is to cut out random shapes out of sugar paper – include some curves and straight lines – and then assemble to make your letters. This way enables you to make forms you would never be able to draw without this element of chance built in.
