It's Common Cents

Typeface creation made of the most Common Cents around...

The penny is the most common cent tossed into a tip jar, a street-musician's instrument case, and your local restaurant's fountain. Despite having monetary value, this typeface is made up of the underdog of cents, the most left-behind and forgotten-of-all cents, but nonetheless a piece to all of our bus-stop remains and couch-cushion leftovers.

I liked the idea of creating a new value for my -- mostly -- disregarded pennies which, consequently, I had no guilt cutting up. But once I did, I found myself coveting them during the process and referring to them as 'trinkets,' which I would never have done prior to cutting them up and changing their purpose.

You can tell how much a coin has been handled through their polish and their age, and many of the pennies that I spend have outlived me. This makes them interesting pieces of our system even though they are nearly disregarded as valuable outside of piggy-banks. But now these 29 cents can have a more exciting purpose than the other pennies today.

Inspiration

Pomme Chan is a designer, illustrator, and graphic artist based in London. She uses collage elements by combining photographic elements with hand-drawn illustration, creates illustrative and ornamental typefaces inspired from life, and also incorporates a 'girly' voice (in her ads, for instance) that is conversational as well as punny, but also relatable and interesting.
 I love her work with illustrative animals and I adore her typefaces…
As a designer, I really enjoy where craft meets design and where art and design co-mingle. I think it is very important to be true to your Hand and to be true to yourself stylistically, too. As an artist, I am always attracted to design-work that is able to create imagery that does not abandon the things that I love about art, and to be able to bring it into the realm of graphic art. Chan is painterly, illustrative; clever, and her work has an intricacy that attracts analysis and observes ornamentation in a manner that is not distracting, bringing a sophistication to her illustration that is unique to other designers.
To a degree, I find her work intimidating, but I always come to her for illustration inspiration. While a lot of her work relates to the fashion world, her commissions span from textile design, site-specific work, wallpaper, and specialized typefaces. I am so inspired by her designs because I am reluctant to leave behind everything that I know and love about the visual-artworld…I revere her work professionally as well as aesthetically.

Trendy Design

Something I notice a lot about trendy design is the way the 'voice' is handled, lots of hand done-ness and crafty design around today to be ironic, or welcoming, or personable in other ways. I think that this is pretty appropriate, a lot of this has to do with a certain cultural-appeal to the audience of particular design and having design now spanning into realms where good design was previously sometimes neglected, but I definitely notice a lot of craftiness. It is interesting to see craft + design in a successful and overtaking way -- and working well. Here's some stuff that I found that shows what I consider trendy design…

Take II

Re-did the wold peace day poster from our in-class timed exercise -- much happier with it. I feel like it is more successful overall and ultimately more appropriate! Couldn't resist the denim…

good design/ bad design

bad design

good design

Self-portrait, 08/2014

Timeline to I am Now in Design, 08/2014