Jie Ji

Explore Approaches to Evoke Happiness in Photography and Typography

Abstract

Inspired by documentary photography, I observed and recorded life in detail for a month in this project. Every time I feel emotional fluctuations, I freeze the picture by taking photos with mobile phone and record the moments that make me feel happy at any time. At the end of each day, I describe the photo with a short text to help me recall the feelings and memories of that moment. After finishing the observation phase, all the images were collected and organized, edited into a loose-leaf book, and attempts were made to map the emotional experience each image displayed by building a typography. It was a challenging process, and typography went through three iterations of updating in total, finally presenting with poetic and ambiguous visual effects. The other two experiments were hand-painted collage and creative fonts.

In this phase, I observed life, recorded events that could produce happy emotions by photography, also recorded them with the words. I tried the first version of typography experiment, which consisted of collage and handwritten words. However, the feedback was less than ideal and the form needed to be reconsidered.

In phase 2, I tried different typography experiments. The second version is composed of graphics and text effects. In order to make my content easy for viewers to understand, I put all the pictures and text on the back of the paper, and On the front of the paper, I tried to use some text effects corresponding to the pictures to express the typography. However, the information received visually is too similar, which leads to visual fatigue and reduces viewers' interest in reading to a large extent. Therefore, on the basis of the second version, I began to think about new ways of practice.

In the practice process of the phase 3, cocncrete poetry is my main research object. It is an interdisciplinary concept that integrates literature and art, and arranges words as visual symbols to present the theme that the creator wants to express. Concrete poetry opened me up to a new field, gave me a deeper understanding of typography. I modified the setting of the whole practice, showing 26 different moments through letters, I want readers can feel happy in the time of one letter song, and temporarily forgetting troubles in life.

Artefacts

Select Bibliography

Carrión U (2001) The new art of making books.
Norman D A (2004) Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, Perseus Books Group.
Vaughan L & Akama Y (2009) Engaging with ku: From abstraction to meaning through the practice of noticing, in Thomas Daniell, Stanley Russell, Benoit Jacquet (ed.) Proceedings of The Architecture of Phenomenology Conference 2009, Japan, 26-29 June, 2009, pp. 1-16.