Type Exercise: Designing a Cliché

Published on April 30th, 2008

This is a type design exercise I did while I was attending the Art Institute of Phoenix. It proved to be one of my favorite projects, so I decided to share it with you here.

Project | Typographically Represent a Cliché

Purpose

To understand the expressive quality of words in a phrase and explore type as a graphical element.

Exercise

Choose a common cliché such as “keep a stiff upper lip,” “smoke like a chimney” or “between the devil and the deep blue sea.” (Keep in mind that I am in the U.S. and these may not be clichés in your country). Typographically represent the cliché. You can create illustrations from the letter forms and use color if you choose. Avoid introducing other graphical elements—limit yourself to type.

Format

500px x 300px

Typographical cliche design.

Here is the version I did for my designing with type class at the Art Institute of Phoenix. I later turned it into a magazine spread for a 10K run.

What do you think of it? Is there anything you would have done differently?

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3 Excellent Responses to “Type Exercise: Designing a Cliché”

  1. freddygirl said:

    I think this looks great. We had to do a similar exercise, but using a single word, rather than a phrase or cliche.

    Maybe some of the letterform widths could have been narrowed even a touch more to really give the skyline feeling? But that’s me just being picky. I think it looks terrific, and I love the @ sun. What a great idea.

    freddygirl’s last blog post..graphic design is?


    Posted on April 30th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
  2. kristarella said:

    Very cool. I like how you’ve not only made the sun with type, but put some mountains/landscape in there too.

    kristarella’s last blog post..Expressive words


    Posted on May 1st, 2008 at 1:33 am
  3. Karly Barrett said:

    Freddygirl,

    Thanks for the compliments and writing about this entry on your blog. I actually wasn’t going for a skyline but mountains as Kristarella mentioned. Though, I can see how it could be misinterpreted as a skyline.

    Kristarella,

    I’m glad you like it. Oh, and I just noticed that you did the expressive words exercise. I’ll have to go check it out.


    Posted on May 15th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

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