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OH DANG! its 
04/Layout Exercise
This exercise used a modular grid to arrange text in a variety of layouts. The goal was to compare and contrast different techniques for creating hierarchy, visual interest and consistency using InDesign. I created 2 designs for each of 3 levels of restriction.

The first and most restrictive specifications were as follows: only use one font (not family), black text on white background, 11pt font left aligned, only text.

The second set of restrictions gave a lot more flexibility: Two fonts, two colors (in addition to black and white), 11pt and one additional size, left aligned or justified, and thin lines (rules).

The final round was the most open ended: 3 fonts, any colors, any text size and alignment, any graphics.

After taking a typography course the year before, I was already accustomed to thinking about letters as shapes. So I decided to technically follow the specifications by using that 11pt font in the greater design elements of the layout. 

Practically, this meant using shearing, rotation, overlapping, and spacing to add texture and structure to the design. Because of the overlapping, I was inspired by typewriter artists and decided to use a faded typewriter inspired font which offers a lot of texture.
Because I went so heavy on the text as a design element in my first design, I decided to only use the exact text given to me. I instead decided to use white space as the main vehicle for hierarchy.

Giving as much white space around the title as I could makes it a focal point in the upper half the the design. I then used the byline to act as a barrier from the title and body text. In the lower portion I similarly gave more white space around the headers and then treated the main text normally, using my grid to create separate columns.
I was really enjoying the hardcore limitations of the first set and honestly didn’t want all the freedom given to me. So for my first design I wanted to really focus on color as the main avenue for hierarchy and contrast.

Clearly I still used multiple typefaces and font sizes, but let’s be honest, the yellow and black is what’s really pulling weight here. I again used glyphs as a design element (slashes as a border, and blocks of yellow text in the grid to add structure and texture) but clearly less so than previously. I really liked altering the text space to give a different feel in the dimensions without actually altering them.
Because I had 2 additional colors, I decided to use a technique I had been using a lot at the time in my next design: using low opacity cyan and magenta duplicates to create a shakey/3D effect. This effect works best on a black background so that was another big decision made by having fun with this technique.

I used this on anything I wanted to stand out a bit more - so headers and the title - so they would have both more texture and weight without using additional font sizes.

This effect really reminds me of old digital displays and so that inspired me to use a second font that felt digital.
By this point, I had embraced my freedom instead of rejecting it, and so I decided to do literally as much as possible without being too much.

This didn’t mean however, I was done having fun with text as a design element. The main driver of this design is using the “Typo” in the wonderful Adhesive No Seven and layering it at low opacity as many times as I felt I could get away with. And by that I mean my computer started getting kind of warm and when I moved my workspace the whole thing inverted colors. So of course instead of taking it down a bit, I screen grabbed the inverted workspace and put that in there too.
The freedom went to my head. I had to come back down to earth.

I decided to meet the requirements in the most understated way possible.

So I used 3 fonts (Italic, Italic C, and Italic T), colored text, a lightly colored background, and an image. I really enjoyed overlaying lines where guidelines were to not only show the structure but also mimic graph paper.

Please don’t give me freedom again.