Abstract

“Experimental Typography Through the Cross-Cultural Process” illustrates the designers’ visual translation of two opposing words. Through every exercise, students’ compositions develop based on personal and cultural influences. Each presentation has its own quality as a composition, but as a whole, each tells the story of a designer’s creative journey. In September 2009, I gave a three-week Typography workshop to fourth-year students in the Print Making Department at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, China. Each assignment presented different visual challenges for students to think about. We started out by defining the meaning of two opposing words: structure and chaos. Students came up with their own precise words to describe structure and chaos in English as well as in Chinese. These words were helpful in making different compositions from that point. Each composition reflected the process and showed the conceptual development. As we advanced, students learned to treat letters as abstract elements. In the last phase of the project, image research was brought into the process to further personalize the results. Chinese characters, alphabet, image and color all must capture the meaning of the words. I find the cross-cultural elements fascinating!