I was tasked with designing a simplified animal form of my choosing. The goal was of the project was to capture the animal's signature characteristics and personality traits through point line and shape. Once we made our creature mark we were challenged to incorporate it in a typographic composition that follows the Fibonacci sequence.
Research
I started my process by looking up reference images of my animal, the magpie. I was interested in the bird's plumage because it made the bird look like to was wearing a suit. I then started to do research on the magpie in order to make a list of its traits and features.
-Scavenger
-Mischievous
-Dressed in feathers
-Small
-Swift
-Intelligent
-Distinguished
Sketching
What I mainly focused on was trying to capture the animal's likeness to understand the form better before going through the simplification process.
Digital Iterations
As I progressed into Illustrator, I was able to make the form more simple by adding more shape language and removing any overly complex elements such as the feet from the initial sketch.
Final
Overall I wanted to make sure the bird looked recognizable capturing its side profile to show its main identifier. The dots on the legs of the bird implying knee joints and having one leg towards the back and one leg towards the front make the bird appear in motion.
Typographic Composition Experiments
This phase of the project challenged me to try and experiment with type while having it be cohesive with my animal and still communicate a message.
Fonts: Source Sans Variable Bold, Source Code Variable Bold & Regular
Final
The final composition has the type go under and in front of the bird. This creates emphasis on parts of the phrase as the foot closest to the ground looks to be propelling off of the word "Feathers" and the front most foot pointing at "Dressed in Magpie's."
