Nicole Hall

"Method to the Madness" is a quote I hold very dear to my heart, and so for this assignment I was thrilled to be able to illustrate the phrase in a bit of a chaotic but beautiful manner. 

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This custom type started out with some scribbles on the back of a receipt, bored at work. I was inspired by a deck of playing cards, and the whimsical line art you can find on some of them. I chose a standard serif font to use as my base, and actually created the piece by typing out the phrase in a few different typefaces before deciding on the infamous Times New Roman. I decided to play heavily off the diamond shape, and carried this-- along with circles-- throughout the piece. The high contrast of the sharp, blunt edges and the organic round shapes is something that is very pleasing on the eye. I played around with an "optical illusion" feel, deliberately leaving parts as strokes and others as fill, which is typically unexpected. There is a lot of negative space throughout the typography leaving room for the eye to rest. While colour was encouraged for the assignment, I chose to stick with flat black and white as the design is very intricate and eye catching as is. This project was really difficult to begin with, I just could not manage to create the feel I wanted digitally. I found the solution to this project being actually drawing out the lettering, scanning them in (including my poor, poor receipt), and tracing over digitally to work out the math.

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The final print works both large and small scale, however in my opinion the bigger and more hectic the better.