What is this project about?
This is a first set of wallpapers made to showcase fonts available through Adobe Typekit, a subscription font service that comes with Adobe Creative Cloud. I am working with the Typekit team to develop a set of creative wallpapers, using various fonts available to use on a website or in applications. The idea is to have a theme centered on the ampersand glyph.
So far, after making a number of experiments, I have been most inspired by the Garamond Premier Pro ampersand (which has two distinctive shapes, one for italic and one for regular style). I find them both elegant, timeless and very flexible.
To create these wallpapers, I gravitated towards a few rules:
- "Almost" black and white. I prefer wallpapers that are subdued in their color palette, so I decided to constrain my designs to be very close to black on white, even though they have a warm tone.
- 3D Extructions. The only effect allowed on the Ambersand glyph is 3D extrusion.
- Use Symetry. Rely on at least one symetry.
I am fascinated by the different reactions I get when I show these images to people around me. Just like cloud formations allow us to project our imaginations and see different animals, landscapes or faces, I have worked to create abstract shapes, from the ampersand glyph, that can evoke human or animal faces with different expressions, varying from scary, beligerent or mesmerizing.
Process
I created these wallpapers in Cinema 4D and Photoshop. In Cinema 4D, I use very basic lightling (2 to 4 lights) and I use sketch and toon materials which lend a very graphical look. I then take the Cinema 4D rendering into Photoshop for compositing and texturing. I use brushes and textures from the Creative Cloud Market assets (which I access through Creative Cloud Libraries) and from subtlepatterns.com.
I have included screenshots of the different phases below.
Mobile Phone Wallpapers
Desktop wallpapers are further down on the page.
Wallpaper #1 – The mustache
Wallpaper #2 – The Warrior
Wallpaper #3 – The Alien
Wallpaper #4 – The Greek Mask
Desktop Wallpapers
Wallpaper #1 – The Mustache
Wallpaper #2 – The Warrior
Wallpaper #3 – The Alien
Wallpaper #4 – The Greek Mask
Process Steps
The compositions start in Cinema 4D with extruded text and symetry objects to create the composition's basic layout and lightling. At this step, I am looking for the ambient occlusion and the long shadows. Thanks to the multipass rendering feature of Cinema 4D, I can get the lighting, shadows and ambient occlusions as separate layers in the Photoshop file that Cinema 4D generates. I am then able to manipulate these layers for final compositing and texturing in Photoshop.
