About the Project

Hallow'een was just around the corner. With this in mind, our typography instructor gave us an assignment with the theme 'scary'. To see what we would come up with without any restrictions or guidelines, he left us pretty much to our own devices. There were no limitations as to size or how many colours or font types and how many fonts we could use. Of course, the project had to use type in some way. The only other factor of note is that this was an 'in-class' assignment, so we had to complete it within our three-hour class.

About the Approach

The photographic imagery that I used as a backdrop was from photos I had taken of some wonderfully grungy buildings in the Chinatown district. These (combined with the Photoshop techniques I used) provide a rich yet muted texture. In my head at that time was a powerful but disturbing movie I had recently seen called 'spider', by director david cronenberg. [see also my film credits sequence, created in Flash, in the motion (graphics) section of the portfolio] I distilled my response as to why the film was so scary to three words:

dysfunction, disconnect and disturb(ed).

These are the words I concentrated on in my piece. For me, psychological imbalance and its tragic consequences are so very much more frightening than any physical kind of danger.

I carefully chose the fonts. I avoided any kind of obviously Hallowe'en-like font, because this was a serious piece and I didn't want it to merely be a caricature of scary. The Gothican font in the word 'disconnect' has a deliciously elegant yet austere look, and has a look of being from another age (perhaps the Middle Ages?). The Gothican 't' also looks like a cross, and I like this religious reference, because so much about religion is really a mystery.

'Scary' was entirely created in Photoshop, and I used every Photoshop trick in the book: lots of layers, a combination of many modes, opacities, filters, and masks. I hope you can sense from the piece a creepy, chilling, and disturbing feeling.