How would they visualise a circle?-Stefan Sagmeister

Stefan Sagmeister

Having in mind that Sagmeister’s work is often natural, extreme and sometimes disgusting, I visualised Sagmeister’s circle formed by sausages or onions! This is of course a rough idea, it doesn’t really remind me of Sagmeister’s work. I should find a different way to visualise a circle from Sagmeister’s perspective

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How would they visualise a circle?-The idea after Christmas

After some drinks of wine, intelligent conversations with new people, a lot of food and good relaxing Christmas time back home in Cyprus, I came with an idea for my D&AD project. Trying to think how I could link the three designers together, to find a single element to connect them I remembered that the Typographic Circle obviously has to do with a simple but at the same time complicated graphic shape, the circle! So, my idea is formed around a question, ‘how these designers would visualise a circle?’ or ‘what a circle can be in their eyes?’. I could email them and ask them of course, but I think they won’t reply to me – well, I can try!

Post tutorial notes

Booklet made with tracing paper

• try it with typed text
• thinner tracing paper
• use ring instead of ring for binding
• print on acetate as well

A1 sheets of paper

• go further with the first version (that looks like a simple list, not the one I unsuccessfully to make it expressive)
• handwriting and typed-carefully with the handwriting, keep the lines straight
• colour-yellow typography on black background (the usual way to make someone look)
• use translations for the greek at the bottom? or in brackets
• I can use only some phrases from the text-try it out

Think about the places/station

• the text can be placed where the screen with the running text is (where it says when the train comes, where is calling etc)-imagine the text running there, it would be really odd!
• next time go to the station with a letter from university (last time they looked suspicious when I was sitting there writing in my notebook for an hour)
• observe the station-where I can place the text

Rotating/rolling billboards

it would be a good idea to place single lines of texts on rotating billboards so with every motion the viewer will see a different phrase

I was thinking about the one that rolls horizontally instead of vertically. I need to find one of these but I guess I won’t find any in Maidstone

Bus stops

• another place to display the text is where the bus times are on bus stops-my chronological text relates to that
• I can add borders or make it in the same colours, same design
• take pictures of those as well to mock them up on the computer

Mapping movements in my room experiment

• I need to make the 2 window video in After Effects-fast forward them as well

the strings I’ve cut

• consider the post its I placed next to them (look at photographs)
• I can play with them/ design them better-include info: distance, measurement, how many times (how many strings)
• present them wrapped on the table or hang them on a wall (wrapped on the table will look like seized by police!)

Post-tutorial notes

Cutting and pasting text in notebooks

Discussing about the experiment with deconstructing the map list and arranging it on pages:

• redo it/experiment further
• consider the format of the notebook each time, can it be landscape? can it be a folded concertina that it unfolds and all the text appears in front of you in a way?
• try it with fewer words on each page-placing big extracts of the text doesn’t go away from the concept of the list-fewer text makes it more interesting, makes text breath better
• colour? bold font? highlight some words?

2 layers of poetry

A nice idea would be to have some words in bold or different colour or even different font and then when you read all those highlighted words you make a new sentence/phrase/realisation out of the existing thoughts! This needs work and I think it should be done on the computer?

The lists

Discussing further the idea with the recordings as lists, a step further/final outcome could be to go to public spaces and map them like I did in my notebooks but this time go to places like train stations or where people have the time to sit and stare at something, observe, wait for something. Then make those recordings big lists and put them back in those places. In some way those map lists would be the representation of the place there. People would stare at it and read about my observations and thoughts I had at that time in that place. The lists could be placed where advertisements are. Obviously I won’t be allowed to do such a thing but I can always mock it up, or just map places in the university where I can ask to display those text maps.

An issue that was raised before in this blog is that I think in Greek, although those text maps are in English. So, in some way. I control the maps and basically my unconscious. My lack of full knowledge of the English language allows me to play with it and make poetic combinations of words, grammatical mistakes become an interesting representation of my observations and my thoughts. Probably recording all these places in Greek would give a different perception and also it wouldn’t be that interesting in Greek, as English language is more experimental for me. English is the way to communicate and learn for the last 3 years.

Although, if those text maps were in Greek, would they be understandable?

After a discussion, being understandable or not, is not the issue as the interesting part is the shape of the language here. Maybe I could make things stand out so that makes people understand that I observed different things and tried to map places in relation to my observations and unconscious. Also, a Greek text map in a public space in the UK might look interesting, as it will show a different perception of the place.

All these things bring in a lot of new issues which I’d rather now to go into as it could be a nice final major project, to get myself into the shape of language.

So leaving that for a later stage.

Mapping my movements in my room

Regarding this experiment, ideas discussed:

• video myself doing this
• add sound-probably me reading one of the one-hour recording I made
• take the string from one place to the other, cut them, and hang them on the wall, just to observe the distances
• take photographs of where each ending point of the string is

The problem with this experiment is that it goes beyond the idea of mapping. I will need to find something that speaks about maps with this.

PS. It’s strange how every time I go to the tutorials prepared to say that I am stuck, I come back with a lot of new things to discover!

Post-tutorial notes

Discussing about the text-based maps I was making and the last experimentation with the ‘2 tables, 4 chairs’ questions like ‘What does it speak about/engage with’, ‘where can it be seen?’ come up.

What if a list of mapping experiences would appear unexpectedly when you are about to use the loo roll?! What I am trying to think here is places where you least expect to see lists, or more specifically lists like these I am doing

To-do things to experiment for the coming week

As working on my laptop doesn’t get me somewhere really interesting it would be a good idea to experiment with other things

• try arranging my lists in a blank notebook
• print the lists and placed them in places where they are least expected to be seen: on the floor, in a menu (make it look like a menu and then when is opened it comes up with the least
• think more about lists, where you expect to see them and where you don’t

Place/location

• try different methods of mapping
• location is the main thing, start with that and then continue with me (thoughts, experiences etc)

• place post its in places when I think of something (e.g. when I look out of the window and think of something, write that down on a post it and stick it on the window so at the end of the day I will come up with a place full of post its/thoughts-this way I will map exactly my experiences/consciousness in relation to the place
• make an old idea of mine-the idea with the strings in the room-every time I move from one place to another in my room, take a string and stick it on walls and stuff so at the end of the day my room will be full of strings which will be my movements

Where else can I map movements?

• Supermarket? Where do I go first? There are studies of where people go first and how supermarkets put unnecessary things next to necessary ones just to make people consume them
• Mapping music? When does it go off and on? Some things are more interesting to some people than others-music could be one of those