Ashley Wood
This was a two-part University project from OCADU. The first part was to pick an artist and create a pamphlet for a hypothetical art show. The second part was to create a unique typeface for the pamphlet, based on the work of their chosen artist.
I chose the artist Ashley Wood, famous comic aritst, commercial illustrator, a traditional painter, and toy creator. With his hungongous range, my goal was to highlight the different mediums he uses for his art.
Ashley is most famous for his work in comic books, getting his start as a cover illustrator for Todd McFarlane. With this in mind, the interior layout was set up like a comic book, focusing on his black and white illustrations and use of screentone as a visual element.
The exterior of the pamphlet is meant to reflect some of his most famous works, his oil paintings. I personally love them because of the great deal of texture visible. With less text to contend with than the interior, this was the perfect place to showcase the paintings.
One of my biggest problems with pamphlets and brochures is that they eventually pile up and don't get used. Taking inspiration from Ashley's robot toy line, I also added perphorated arms to the pamphlet (outlines so as to not cover up the painting), which the exhibit visitor can use to make the pamphlet into a robot. The style of the robot was taken from one of Ashley's paintings.
The second part of the project was the typeface. Inspiration for this came from his rough drawings. So much of his work is sketched out first in this dynamic style, and is in most cases just as exciting and interesting as the final work.
The typeface was done in three stages. The first being a rough sketching of each letter with a caligraphy pen, for many letters, doing multiple forms, the letter A was especially difficult. The second stage was adding screen tone to the letters. In some cases, like with the letter J, tone was used to beef up letters where I felt they were too narrow. It too went back to Ashley's comicbook work. The final stage was a cleanup on the computer, where I removed extra ink bleeding and punched up the screentone contrast.
