For the Art of Dying project, I have been continuing to develop the type shapes for the chorus sequence.
As with the verse sequences, I first worked with a generic type shapes : a medium-weight, condensed sans serif with no definitive style or character.
initial type work on the chorus sequence:
As I have mentioned previously, I realized that this project required much more specific type design to distinguish the 2 distinctive rhythmic styles used in Joseph Duplantier's vocal work in The Art of Dying.
The second of these styles is used in the chorus sequence, which you can listen to here:
The vocal work in the chorus of The Art of Dying is characterized by long notes held out over rapid drum rhythms are grounded in front of an extremely dense wall of sound. The high contrast between this slow, long melody and the extremely dense and fast musical background creates an effect of stasis. Time seems to stop and the melody just hangs in the air.
To illustrate this, I chose a bodoni-based alphabet to emphasis the thick-thin contrast. I rounded out letters like the "w" and chose to use certain lower-case letters like the "n" and the "a" to underline the drawn-out, smoothed melody. The sharp, this serifs represent the high, sharp drum beats.
The result is much denser, visually, and brings out the "propeller" effect of stasis: the music is moving so quickly that it completely slows down and you only hear the melody.
Once I begin working on coloring, the type will be in white, with the tunnel structure in shades of dark grey/black.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.