Type2: CNN Heads Up! (Crit Post)

So the Weather project has come to an end in time for Spring break. This poject certainly had a big impact on my way of thinking about type and the way it's created. They aren't some rigid, computerized, bitmapped, creation, but something that's alive and malleable.  The type can speak so much more than the word it shows.

Here are the final mounts for the project.  The bus graphics, the billboards, and the interstitial. I'll upload the interstitial soon.

At first, I took the experimentation literally. I baked earth to make drought, I blew paper to shoot wind. Thinking literally, I thought the point would come across thoroughly and quickly to the viewer, but I was mistaken. My peers were pumping out much better imagery than I was at the time, and I think that they had more open minds as to their process and materials to work with. So after a crit or two, I took to cut paper and layering. 
I wanted the viewer to experience far more than a giant logo. I didn't want an overwhelming commercial feel, but a personal hand crafted one. The cut paper let me loosely render forms and get expressive in their shape.  The layering process was really like working through photoshop, and even more so when I layered the photos in computer to create the final pieces. 
Creating a compelling composition was difficult. There was a system with the logo and a chosen slogan that had to be applied and paid careful attention to. The buses also gave tough areas that couldn't be covered, like wheel wells and doors.  So working around such elements and still maintaining legibility was the key to this project.  Something so experiemental still has to be readable to passersby when the bus might only give them seconds to see the image as it passes.  The billboards also presented the same issue, as the driver only has seconds to pass by and recieve the message.
Cohesion was the second half. Everyone could make an interesting image, but did they all look like part of the same campaign? This would all come together in the interstitial, and really had to function as a whole.  I decided that a light gray pallet with whites would work well to my narrative of a dry region.  The slogan was kept brief, and the band helped to separate the CNN logo from the image behind.  Overall, I'm pleased with the outcomes, but part of me still would like to work with different processes in rendering type.  I look forward to future experimentation.