What was I aiming to achieve by splitting graphic design into component parts?
I was aiming to see could you isolate the part of each that made it a specific tie to reaction to the place it was made.
So for photography (Image), obviously the way you tie that to place is by taking a photo of the place you are talking about. What I chose to do is instead of that is focus on how analogue methods made you slow down and consider the composition in a different way. I also felt (from experience) that analogue methods have a very process driven approach, one that is more linked to experimental methods.
So for photography I was really looking at the approach and how to create space inside the image, how to make the page work harder to grab your attnention, in this saturated age, in a more filmic way. But also the way of composing outside.
For typograhy I was looking at what happens when you take the numerous choices of Adobe off the table. ANd what happens when you feel the lettering etc etc.
SO my practice based approach was all about trying to engage with the tacit knowledge that materiality encourages, and analogue approaches encourage.
I have to say that, apart from taking photos of New West and some of the urban poetry being a response to it, I am not sure how it relates to place.
I have tried to come back to Vancouver and place in terms of typographic archive research but everything is so general. You end up taling about wider typographic and design movements. Dutch design is an anamoly not the rule.
I am not sure that it is possible to narrow down a typeface to a place. You can to time of creation and the rationale to its design but that speaks more to the wider industrial factors than it does place. Otherwise you go to look at vernacular signage which seems more rooted in idoscyncracies than the rigorous methodology tied to a typeface. (The original Whisper project -fivethousandfingers – was trying to replicate that) and Go the North did that. But are these just replicating a hand drawn feel and therefore not to do with place.
Photography is much more closely linked. Poetry is much more closely linked. Typography (apart from one of fonts) is much more rooted in a rigorous internationally recognised approach.
I am not sure what I am trying to capture is actually the rythm of a place. It is what sort of affect does place have on graphic design but more what affect does how you capture it have on how connected you are to it, and what impact does that have on the graphic design emerging.