Typography Blog

I decided to do my project over quotes from a few of my favorite rappers.

This quote is from rapper Thebe Kgositsile, known professionally as Earl Sweatshirt. The quote comes  from his song Veins. The song is about taking the good with the bad in order to grow as a person. When he says his "hair got knotty" he is referring to the dreadlocks he grew out since his last album. I chose this quote because I can relate to having dreads and my hair is very important to me. When designing this I wanted to make the actual quote part look kind of like a forehead and to do this I drew an outline of dreadlocks above the quote. I made the "Hair Got"   part in a hairy font called HairyFun. I also used the font Knot BRK for the "Knotty" part of the quote. To give credit to the person who said the quote I remade Earl Sweatshirts logo. I like the final product of this quote turned out well. I'm glad I was able to accomplish what I wanted to with this project.

This quote is from hip hop legend Nas. It's the title of the third single from Nas' legendary Illmatic album and the quote is repeated in the hook of the song. The World Is Yours is considered by many music critics to be one of the greatest rap songs of all time.  I chose this quote because I often listen to this song as a confidence booster, throughout the song Nas speaks of living everyday life and still having this feeling of having the world in the palm of his hands. The quote also refers to having lofty ambitions despite having humble beginnings. When designing the graphics around this quote I knew I wanted to represent the world in someway so I drew a globe and I thought that representing New York City was important because it is Nas's hometown. I drew an outline of NYC and put Nas's name inside of the outline and his name is in a graffiti inspired font. I wanted to make the quote in the shape of clouds to put around the globe I made. I was able to do this using a font appropriately named  cloudy. I really liked how this quote turned out and I think it was one of the better ones I did.

This is a quote from rapper Kendrick Lamar. This quote is from his song Poetic Justice which is a love song. The quote is posed as a question and the meaning of the quote to the song is actually very important.  The movie Poetic Justice stars Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur. This song samples the  Janet Jackson song In the Thundering Rain and the quote "If I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room would you trust it" is comparable to the Tupac poem The Rose That Grew from Concrete. The quote is asking a philosophical question through an analogy. We know that it is impossible for a flower to grow in a dark room because flowers require sunlight to grow. Kendrick is pondering the accuracy of this assessment as he wonders if something beautiful can grow from the darkness. I chose this quote because I feel like I have been able to grow from dark and negative times in my life. When designing the typography for this quote I knew I wanted it to be flower themed. I decided to put a large flower in the middle of the quote and use two different fonts for the quote. To add to the flower theme I used a flower font called Wander and at the end of the quote it references darkness so I used a dark themed font called the dark. I really liked how this one turned out but I wish that the flower font was a little thicker so it showed up better.

This quote is from rapper, fashion designer, record producer, video director, and entrepreneur Tyler, The Creator. This quote comes from his song Where This Flower Blooms, and his album Flower Boy. In this song Tyler talks about his life and what he is expected to be, he also talks about his sexuality on the song. As a black man who has had relationships with other men Tyler doesn't meet what stereotypically seen as "black" in terms of rap culture. While a lot of times hypermasculinity is valued in black culture, Tyler wants to use his influence to tell his young black audience to be their true selves regardless of what's expected. I wanted to make this quote look afro-centric while being unique at the same. I used the font of from The Lion King musical for the "Tell These Black Kids" part and on the top and bottom border I used traditional African art. To add to the afro-centrism I put the Black Lives Matter fist in the middle of the quote. Then, I put yellow stars on the side of the BLM fist and I made the African art black and yellow to match the color scheme. This is the favorite typography project I did. It turned out exactly how I designed it to.

I thought this project was fun and I learned some things too. I learned how to download fonts online ad put them into your font book app on the Mac. I also learned some things about typography like what the difference is between san serif and serif fonts. Overall, I enjoyed this project and I look forward to doing similar ones in the future.