Typesetting Principles Work

Paper Folding

Image from Hiatus Kaiyote's website, wanted to experiment with the folded paper aestheic, but in a way that is less obvious than folding the paper to create letters. Designed by a friend of the bands Laneous (https://www.instagram.com/laneous/), there isn't much information about him online, but his style of work is realy unique and childlike, he is also a musician. 

Decided to fold the paper with letters printed on in different ways to see how they manipulated the letters (instead of manipulating the paper to create a letter).

Folding the individual letters over to manipulate the letters. Have the letter printed on both sides of the paper so no information is lost within the folding process. The only thing changed is the angle of the letter within the anatomy.

I liked this way of manipulating the type, however it does make it more difficult to read, the angle of the fold doesn't have any correlation to the genre, its purely at random. It would be nice to find an angle to fold all the letters at to see how that effects the image - could lead to interesting repetition (linking to the song intro).

Here folding the paper with the words whole makes it slightly more legible, so have the artist on one side.

And on the other it has the track, this way you get an interesting mirrored image, and the length of the strip remains constant.

I really like the folded paper being reversible, I think it could be something interesting to play with when looking at the form of the sleeve. Thinking about folding the paper that makes up the sleeve, having one bit of info on one side and one on the other - could be fun to mess with.

• Could have the text all fold on an angle that's been found through further research, less sporadic, more justified. - do for both types of folding. 

Path

I looked at ways of arranging the letters along a path, so I plotted the points of the different studio's  Jorja Smith recorded her album 'lost and found' and used this as a way of organising the letters.

The map route of each studio Jorja Smith recorded at for 'Lost and Found'

Artist name arranged to read left to right

Song title to follow direction of the path

The results of using the path as a guide weren't as effective as I'd hoped, the letters look like they've just been placed on in a random order and don't have a sense of continuity. I don't feel like this reflects any elements of Neo Soul since the core of the genre is the attention to detail within the production of the music.
However the word reading from left to right is definitely the most effective way of arranging the letters - could use this for other experiments.

• Think about the kerning of the letters, how does this impact the image.
• Scale in relation to text - something to think about moving forward.

Grid

Using information from research to the location of where 'Brown Sugar' by D'angelo was recorded (Battery Studios, New York) and placed a multi column grid around it, the grid consists of 21 squares (3x7) as this is the age D'angelo was when the album was released. I chose 'Brown Sugar' as it was the first album referred to as being in the Neo Soul genre due to the fusion of contemporary R&B and traditional soul music.

The 21 blocks around Battery Studios used to make up the grid

Decided to arrange the letters within the 3x7 grid to see what arrangements could form as a result.

Arranging the song title and artist to read left to
 right and remaining in the 3x7 grid with no spaces. 

Here having the song title and artist separated
by a gap within the grid. 

The letters looked interesting within the box, but felt like it could be expanded on a bit more, the use of the gap made it easier to differentiate between artist and song title, but I don't know if I prefer that or not.

• For the gap try using hanglines for a more organised appearance.

Using the grid as 7x3 instead, still reading as artist, title, from left to right.

The 'landscape' version of the grid makes it more legible, but again I'm not sure if I like it that way or not - would need to place alongside an image to see how the two interact. I feel the hard square could become distracting if misplaced within the image.

Further development of gridded type
- exposed grid

Further development of gridded type
- hidden grid

Combining grids with repetition (taken from the intro of the song) to create a modular grid system which allows for a more interesting visual to appear, the words in this configuration read artist, title, going from top to bottom, left to right. The words are less legible but still have an element of organisation, the exposed grid really furthers the idea of organisation. When you remove the grid you can still clearly see that the letters are organised but it's not as clear as to the construction.

Experimenting with font and line weight to see the effect on the type. The use of Arial black is really effective on the layout of the type, the slightly compressed letters feel like they're being condensed into a grid more -something to consider moving forward with project.

Individual configurations of the title and
artist - arial regular

Individual configurations of the title and
artist - arial black

• To carry forward thing about the positioning when put into context, how will it look when incorporated onto the sleeve?
• Use of image surrounding the text needs to be considered, think about the multi column grid and how to arrange each article.