Object typography

Vladimir Koncar 

Context

Vladimir Končar was my inspiration for making typography out of everyday items. His main work is as a graphic designer he also experiments with photography, typography and short films as examples. He aims for his work to send a message and do this in different ways. His main aim is experimentation and the ability to continue with this. This piece is from his collection Diary Type and started in 2007.

Meaning

To help me with the understanding of his work I used his own website. For his pieces he creates a saying out of the object he is working with in this case it is paperclips and also produces some of the alphabet and numbers to show you what they look like.

In this case the saying is “Where are those paper clips when you need them most”. These sayings allow everyone to relate to his work which does give the piece meaning. Everyone loses things or can’t find something and he just used paper clips to get the meaning across. If the saying was made out of anything different the piece wouldn't make any sense, it just emphasises the saying he is trying to get across.  

Aesthetic   

To create this piece he started off by collecting various objects in this case paper clips and then uses them to create letters. From the letters he writes his thoughts down and the font, the object and the saying are all connected. A rough shape of the letter is also drawn this way the artist has an idea of how to place the object and can rearrange it however he wants.

The scale of the piece changes depending on the part of the picture. The letters of the alphabet are made small and then one chosen letter is made to be bigger to show you it in more detail. The phrase is then made bigger than the examples of the alphabet but smaller than the enlarged separated letter.

He only uses silver paper clips all the way through this piece but I have seen that you can get different coloured paper clips. I don’t think that the colour of the paper clips would affect the meaning of this piece but would make it look friendlier and less formal.  

The more paper clips that are added the darker the letter looks this adds tone and shading to an extent. I don’t think this is theme that runs through the letters but it does make the letters look more bubble shaped.

Personal response

I chose to look at Končar because I wanted to look at object typography, he inspired me to use any object that was put in front of me and to think about the type of sayings that I could come up with. When I first saw his pieces I thought they looked amazing because of how neat and tidy they looked. The gummy bear one

that I saw when looking through his pieces looked really tasty.   

To create these pieces we got put in groups so we could mix and match all of our ideas together and could therefore create better pieces. Once we were given our items we were told to come up with a mind map so all our ideas and phrases were there and if we came up with any more could write them down. My table was given coins, rubber gloves, buttons and sticky notes. 

“Push The Button” is made out different sized and coloured buttons. The sentence is not that easy to see because of the different coloured buttons and the fact that they are so pale against the table. So maybe this piece could be changed by using darker coloured buttons or simply putting it on a darker background. The push the button phrase was inspired by the song, plus it is a simple imperative that most people use each day.     

“Stick it” is made out of pink, green, yellow and blue post it notes. This is a saying that is related to post it notes seeing as they are sticky. The Repetition of the colours, pink yellow green and blue was used as a pattern when this piece was created. It was quite hard to create the letters exactly the same size and of a good shape as I was creating it on a wall.    

“Break the Bank” is made out of 1p coins. I wouldn’t say that break the bank was a well known saying or phrase but it is related to money. I think that a different font should have been used to create this typography, perhaps a less bubbly and friendly font because when I visualise someone breaking a bank this is something that is not very friendly.  

“Fairy Liquid” is made out of rubber gloves. This was thought of straight away as something that could be created out of rubber gloves. This is more of the use of advertising as we are using a product word in my work. The mixture of the blue and yellow gloves was not intentional but I think the `Y’ and the `Q’ look quite good with the blue gloves used to create the letter as it makes it look more interesting.    

“To Do” is made out of post it notes with a tick at the end of it. The colours of the post it notes on this one, green, blue, pink and yellow, have been mixed. This piece reminds me of Nike and their slogan Just do it because of the tick, but I think our saying can also relate to theirs as well. This piece also looks pixelated or lit up because the way the colours are mixed.   

“Money Doesn’t Make The World Go Round!” is made out of 1p coins. This is a well known Phrase I think unlike the other one the font is just right because I feel that this saying is often used on young people who are always borrowing money off their parents.   

“Hi 5” is made out of blue and yellow rubber gloves. I think the number should have been made using the blue gloves if I had more because it would look much better. 

“Cash in hand” is made out of 1p coins. Upper case letters have been mixed in with lower case and I feel that this should be changed about this piece.  

If I compare Končar’s with my versions of object typography I can see that his is much neater than mine as he has had more time to rearrange his piece and make it better. Another difference is that on certain objects I am able to use colour and make it look more interesting. My post it note typography is on a large scale but uses a lot less of the object which is totally different to the artist’s piece. On one of my pieces I used a symbol and not just a number or letter which is something different that has come from the artist’s piece.
  

Overall I think the best piece was probably the sticky notes when we used the saying “to do” with a tick on the end as we could use and mix different coloured post it notes, create a saying that symbolised the object we were using and create a little symbol by the side of it.