Summer Brief - Alphabet Soup - My 10 favourite letters

It was interesting and quite fun to see everyone's interpretations of themselves through an alphabet. The concept behind mine was to literally time myself 20 seconds to think of the first word that came to my mind for each letter. I wasn't going to take any more than 20 seconds, and I was going to be honest with myself and literally create a letter out of the first word that came to mind for each letter. So if some of these are considered offensive to any one then I apologise in advance, but hopefully it won't come to that!

As this was, as I said, literally the first thing that came to mind for each letter, some maybe aren't so blatantly about me. Although there is probably some kind of subconscious statement about my personality in there somewhere, the main thing that probably inspired me was the use of Rorschach Tests, otherwise known as an inkblot test. Here's an example incase your confused:

Participants are made to state literally the first image they see when looking at an image like the one shown.

Here are the 10 I picked:

C

I think this one, is probably one of the clearer statements about me. I do genuinely love comics and so it explains why comics are the first thing I thought of when I saw a C. The way it was executed I think was pretty straightforward but quite effective. I don't really like the text I used for 'comics' and I'm not sure about the white background. It all looks a little bare and rushed. I think if the whole alphabet was photographs of stuff I arranged by hand, it would have been quite cool. My digital stuff seems quite rushed.

d

Dinosaurs is weirdly enough the first thing I thought of! I think the way I used a dinosaur to create a d was quite smart. Although this is lowercase which is an issue maybe, my alphabet is a mixture of lower and uppercase, so it doesn't flow in that sense. Once again, I have issues with the background and text. I could have created a nice little background and foreground around the designer rather than a boring white space.

F

Pretty self explanatory really, I enjoy looking at these ones more - where I made it away from the computer and photographed it. It makes it seem like I had a bit more fun doing the project and was abit more creative about it, rather than just going straight to the computer.

K

This is one of the slightly naughty ones!? Unfortunately and shockingly the first thing I thought of for K was Kerry Katona, for whatever reason, maybe I love her and just don't know about it yet. Either way that's the first thing I thought of. The way I implemented this was by drawing lines of cocaine in the shape of a K. I think the idea behind this was quite good but to be honest, in retrospect I wish I actually made this with flour or something, and took a photo. It wouldn't have a dodgy illustration and would look more interesting.

M

This is one that actually came out quite well. The first thing I thought of for M was muslim, which is quite useful because I am a muslim and it says a lot about me, unlike something like 'dinosaur' which is maybe a bit abstract and far fetched. The letter itself is actually the equivalent of an 'M' in the arabic alphabet. I created a stencil and sprayed this onto a plank of wood (first thing I found!)

O

I also quite like this, I actually think this works against a white background, a whole alphabet using fruit would have maybe been cool? I was first going to spray or draw an "O" onto an orange but decided I was already doing some spraying to make the other letters so thought this method would be a nice change.

Q

This is probably my favourite letter in the alphabet. The rest of them, I'll be the first to tell you I'm not fully that proud of, but this one I'm not shy about showing. I recently quit smoking and I used an ashtray and an unlit cigarette to handily make a Q. Compositionally it works quite well too, with the coffee table acting as a nice black background and it all contrasts together nicely.

S

Another simple idea. The first thing I thought of was 'sleep'. In the end i decided to create an 's' lying down to (hopefully) illustrate the idea of an S taking a nap.

t

This I actually quite like too. I created this letter by lining up right angle triangles on a 4x4 grid to create something that resembles a lower case t. I think this is one of my stronger letters, in terms of the actual design. Once again I think the background and font for 'triangle' lets it down. It all looks a bit lazy and rushed and kinda 'bare'.

Y

Explains itself again really, shaped a person doing a handstand in order to create a Y shape. Out of context this would definitely not make people think "Y", but as a set it probably works. Again maybe the background and text could have worked better.

Overall, I think it would have been more interesting if I did more hands-on interpretations of letters. Like how I did my Q, F and C. I think they look much more interesting and fun. The backgrounds on the digital stuff doesn't really work, compositionally, it doesn't really work, I can't put my finger on what but I don't think I executed them too well. This will be something to look back on at some point though and improve from.