Learnsquared - Blog Posts
Main Title Design: Lesson 3.
For this assignment, we were tasked with creating six narrative frames with typography using only a limited set of 40 images. The film is a documentary about the Apollo mission. I used only 6 of those images, in my effort to create a set of modern minimal titles.
Instead of going for the sepia-faded, old-film look, I really wanted everything to have a strong black level, to make it feel more modern, (perhaps more like how the movie Gravity made me feel about outer space). However, I didn't want to completely do away with a nod to the past, to the "Golden Age" of space exploration, so the opening frames are very warm as the sun breaks around the edge of a hidden planet. It evokes a more mysterious energy, more like a sci-fi movie, speaking to discovery and unknown worlds.
As we begin to pan across the planet, we see the Command Module hanging in orbit around the planet. It's moving towards us slightly, even as we pan further to the left of it. As it grows larger in our field of vision, preparing to pass by on the right side of the screen, the camera pulls back through a window, and we realize we are in the Lunar Module, seeing through the eyes of one of the astronauts.
The camera pans away from the first window, settling on the smaller "approach" window. At first the view through that portal is blurred, focusing instead on the numbers on the glass. But once we move beyond that glass, the moon is passing by, filling our vision, until finally, we settle on the final frame. This last shot mirrors and inverts the first frame, contrasting the warm glow of exploration and expectations of 1960s space exploration with the colder, harsher reality that is outer space.
As for why I chose the "side" view of the moon, instead of putting it at the bottom of the shot... simply put, it's not a view we see as much in film and other media. And the truth is, there is no up or down in space, so the views aren't grounded in the planet's surface being beneath your feet.
The font is "Impact Label Regular." I chose it in an attempt to replicate the old-style label machines that created the raised labels for technical systems and buttons back in the 60s and 70s. The font also evokes the feel of classified documents, riddled with black redaction marks. The Apollo missions were all part of the space race and NASA's battle with the Soviet Union (not to mention the strong undercurrents of the Cold War). The science and research documents behind the rockets and computer systems were highly classified materials, and so I wanted to make sure to include an homage to this atmosphere.
(via Homework - 3. A Controlled Experiment)
@ashthorp
Alright, so as my post yesterday mentioned, I’m taking a Main Title Design course, taught by Ash Thorp over at LearnSquared. This lesson was about typography. The homework was to choose a sample logline and create three different cast-and-crew mock-ups, using different variations of the same font family.
I chose a horror sample called "Three Points," the logline of which is: A World War I pilot briefly loses consciousness inside of the Bermuda Triangle and upon waking, fails to discover land or water, and his gas tank remains full.
Playing around with the fairly standard font family Agency, I created three shots from three different title sequence options. I tried to keep the font fairly intact, making only a few subtle changes to hopefully connect it more to the plot ideas, of mystery and horror.
(Images 1-3 are one set, then 4-6, and then 7-9.)
@ashthorp
Working on the most recent lesson for Main Title Design taught by Ash Thorp, the homework was to create a title sequence for a documentary about the Apollo missions. In the process, I came up with this title card. Not exactly the vibe I was going for, but it speaks to my glitchy, sci-fi, cyberpunk side.
Perhaps, if this were an Alien-esque horror movie, I could get away with it.
UI.
When I did this one, I had been seeing a lot of pictures posted from Ash Thorp’s LearnSquared “UI and Data Design” class... recreating a UI look with pen feels difficult (kind of a cool challenge) but anyway, some of the design elements I’ve seen in his work are the inspiration behind this one. Hopefully I’ll take his class one day.
@ashthorp