Typography Task 3B - Type Design & Communication (Sticker Design)

01/06/2022 - 29/06/2022 (Week 10 - Week 14)

WONG JUN ZHE / 0353613
Typography / B' Creative Media / Taylor's University
Task 3B - Type Design and Communication (Sticker Design)

LECTURES

Mr Vinod gave his feedback on our sticker designs.

INSTRUCTIONS

MIB:

Task 3B - Type Design & Communication (Sticker Making)

1. Idea development and sketches

Festival chosen: Happy Chinese New Year

The reason I chose this festival is simple. We are limited to use only shades of red, black, and white in our design, which suits perfectly to the Chinese New Year theme. Besides, I am also familiar with the festival myself and know what graphical elements I can use (e.g. lanterns, Chinese calligraphy, firecrackers, Chinese temples, etc.

First of all, I sketched out five designs that in some way relate to Chinese new year. Each of the design carries a different element of Chinese New Year.

Fig. 1.1 Initial rough sketches, Week 10 (01/06/2022)

2. Digitisation

To start off the digitisation process, I searched up some appropriate and good-looking typefaces. However, I did some modifying to the typeface I chose as I understand this is a lettering exercise. As shown in Fig. 1.2.1, all seven typefaces are more of the handwritten style that looks more fun.

Fig. 2.1 Choosing typeface for digitisation, Week 11 (08/06/2022)

Then, I narrowed the choices down to three fonts from the seven, and eventually chose the best one among them.

Fig. 2.2 Narrowed down to 3 choices, Week 11 (08/06/2022)

Fig. 2.3 Final font type selected, Week 11 (08/06/2022)

After arranging the texts to how I want, I moved on to modifying the design by adding little branches to connect letters, as well as the lanterns. The brush tool and pen tool were used here.

Fig. 2.4 Adding right lantern 1, Week 12 (15/06/2022)

Fig. 2.5 Adding right lantern 2, Week 12 (15/06/2022)

Fig. 2.6 Adding left lantern 1, Week 12 (15/06/2022)

Fig. 2.7 Adding right lantern 2, Week 12 (15/06/2022)

After adding the lanterns, I moved on to add some highlights on the sticker to make it pop. This way, it looks more three dimensional and less flat.

Fig. 2.8 Before adding highlights, Week 12 (15/06/2022)

Fig. 2.9 After adding highlights, Week 12 (15/06/2022)

As of this stage, the sticker's idea is pretty much there. I added a dark red background to add some contrast and make the lettering stand out more. I also changed the colour of the highlights to an even lighter pink to further contrast them with the red letters.

Fig. 2.10 Final touches, Week 12 (15/06/2022)

3. Publishing in Telegram

I followed instructions on the website provided to create and publish my sticker. Fig. 3.1 shows the final sticker being sent on Telegram and how it looks when used.

Fig. 3.1 Sticker on Telegram, Week 12 (15/06/2022)

4. Pre-final

Fig. 4.1 Pre-final, Week 12 (15/06/2022)

5. Post-feedback changes

Fig. 5.1 Post-feedback changes, Week 13 (22/06/2022)

After hearing feedback from Mr Vinod, I amended the shape of the background behind the lantern on the right side. I gave it a rounder and curvier look so it looks less like a vampire fang. Furthermore, I added a white outline to the sticker as required.

Final Outcome

Download Link: https://t.me/addstickers/happycny_sticker_junzhe

Fig. 6.1 Final Outcome, Week 13 (22/06/2022)

Fig. 6.2 Sticker in greyscale, Week 13 (22/06/2022)

PDF Files

FEEDBACK

Week 11

General eedback: All five ideas could work. The first sketch brings out the Chinese New Year vibe well, and is better than the others in thrms of composition (as the final sticker has to be done in a 512*512 px canvas).

Specific Feedback: Tiny ammendments can be made to the lanterns so that they are positioned downwards instead of sideways. This is so that there is less empty space overall. The firecrackers, as seen in sketch #4 can also be implemented here.

Week 12

General Feedback: Stickers have to pop. Find a solution to eliminate the excess negative spaces in my design, such as creating a shape behind hthe design. Upon finalizing the design, I may test it out in Telegram to test the visibility of my sticker.

Specific Feedback: The space between 'New' and "Year" is too big, causing too much negative space. A white outline is needed for all stickers.

Week 13

General Feedback: The sticker looks very vampire-ish probably due to the fang-like shapes of the lanterns. A white outline needs to be added.

Specific Feedback: I can maintain the pink outline, but have to add another white outline for the dark mode users.

REFLECTION

Experience

This project was a real challenge to me. At the sketching stage, I was struggling to think of ideas that can be linked with Chinese New Year. With the colour restrictions, it made it even more challenging. Usually people would associate Chinese New Year with he colours red and gold. However, I am only able to work with one of them. So, without a different colour, I had to utilise graphic elements to bring out the meaning of the festival without it being overpowered. I took my time and eventually came up with something that works. As for the digitisation, I am quite happy with the result. The tools I used most are the brush tool and the pen tool. Overall, it was a great experience creating my first very own Telegram sticker. It was a challenging but fun one!

Observation

I think the biggest observation I made throughout this project is how stickers should look. In order to make the design look like a sticker, I had to refer to other stickers on the web and try to follow that kind of style. According to my observations, stickers are usually constructed using thick, cursive letters with a clear border. They also have little to none negative space on them, meaning the background is usually occupied. Ultimately, I believe observation skill is among the most important skills for designers to produce good designs.

Findings

By doing this exercise, I have discovered ways to do lettering and to create a sticker for messaging use. This includes the designing part as well as the publishing part. I never knew that publishing a sticker on Telegram through the Stickers bot is so convenient.

In my opinion, Shigetaka Kurita is pure genius. He had taken communicating through mobile messages to a whole new level. According to the creator himself, the purpose of his creations was to ease communication on a nascent mobile internet system developed by Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo. Back then, emails were restricted to 250 characters, so the emojis were a way to say more in a limited space.

Nowadays, in a world with advance technology, we can send messages from just a tap with our fingertips. With this luxury of conveniently sending information back and forth, people seek one more thing: speed. Before emojis are made popular, people often use shortcuts like “I M Ok”, “Happy BDay”, “Pls snd me d foto”, “Tnx”, etc. to speed things up.

In 2011, Apple added emoji support to iOS. Android joined in, soon after. This is the beginning of the era of emojis. I remember my 7-year-old self being super fascinated about emojis. I mean, it's convenient, it communicates simple information well, and most importantly, it's fun! Soon, emojis became part of our new vocabulary, lowering the quality of conversation and emotions.

Fig. iii emojitracker.com

Interestingly, there is a website that updates the number of each emoji being used in realtime. Check it out at http://www.emojitracker.com.

Disadvantages of Emojis and Stickers

While there can be benefits for using emoticons, they are not nearly as effective as entire words and sentences. While that is the case, WhatsApp announced cute-looking stickers with a smiling tea cup, glowing face and a broken heart to make actual text messages a distant thought.

Say two cross-cultured people communicate using emojis and stickers, their conversation can only lead to undesirable misunderstandings. The reason being, everyone has their own way of interpreting things and it’s the same while expressing emotions. Sometimes, using emojis and stickers unknowingly convey the reader that they are better dealt with stickers than words, while also expressing that you are no longer interested in the conversation. Personally, I think some people use stickers to end a conversation as it is less awkward or cringy, as the modern world would say. As long as both parties understand the meaning, it should be fine to use in my opinion.

Conclusion

Graphical messages (emojis, stickers, GIFs...) are becoming increasingly common every day. It isn’t just limited to personal lives, but it’s commonly used in businesses these days. Even LinkedIn has emoticons and emojis as part of its commenting system. Many companies form office groups on WhatsApp for formal communications and approvals.

Using these graphical messages, it can conveniently convey information with the trade-off of one's intention become more ambiguous. It can be used for communicating simple messages, but I'd rather stick to proper words and sentences for formal/serious work.

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WONG JUN ZHE (0353613)