I spent a semester down at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota Florida in 2007 from January to May. This typographic assignment called 'Eight Texts' assigned by Polly Johnson, was one that I will never forget experiencing. We were given eight different texts to work from. First stage was experimenting with different typefaces, sizes, grids and one colour. Second, we extracted concepts from one chosen text, and third, we used one concept to execute the text in a sequence of pages. It was a brilliant assignment and very useful for strengthening my sensitivity to typography. Thanks to Polly for encouragment, support and pushing the process work. It was a two-month project with process assessment twice a week, well worth its countless hours of making.
I felt that I needed to step out of a system and used handwriting to expressively communicate the concept of the text I had chosen - a passage from Ferdinand de Sausssure called Spoken and Written. This project made me realize my deep connection with words, typography, expression and movement.
'Signs' was one of the 21 Best of Ringling pieces in 2007 and awarded for Expressive Typography by juror Dave Mason from SamataMason - the firm that rebranded Ringling and launched it while I was there.
It was also a semi-finalist for 'print-design multipage' category at the Adobe Acheivement Awards in 2007.
