Swiss Typeface Supporting Poster (Part 1)

I posted last week about the Swiss Typeface I made for my project, well I stated early on that it was always my intention to design some supporting promotional material to show it off. Well, here's a poster I've done today. It's an A3 of lots of different media cleverly mixed through different layers and masks etc. It's been a lot of work, and I've really enjoyed making it. I'll post different sections of the body of work under new posts just to explain more about the images, just to keep it more organised.

So these first four images show the incremental/sectioned elements that make up the overall piece. I started of with a graphic that was built up using lots of different circles and altered rectangles (my intentions were for it to represent the square cross of Switzerland). The third image down you may notice is made of chocolate, this was an effect which I knew quite well and was keen to use for this particular piece. The other two images depict photographs and images that I used in the digital collage, all edited beyond belief... And of course the Typeface itself. The overall feel of the graphics mirror the style of the Typeface; sharp edged, primitive and graphic.

Swiss Typeface

I've mentioned that as part of my final major project I'm creating Typefaces. Well this here is one created with the intention of it being Swiss through and throughout. But not by traditional standards, when we think of Swiss Style Typefaces, we think of the classics like Helvetica, Avenir, Frutiger and so on; but this here is embodying a different sense of Swiss. I decided to pair each character with a matching photograph that represented Switzerland in it's own way, a lot of them being mountainous Alpine scenery. That's what actually gave me the idea in the first place. The first two characters I created were A & M, if you look again you'll notice the M is just a doubled-up version; both of these characters already have a mountainous quality to them, so I had the idea to add a photograph over the top to emphasise the shape of the character.

Overall I think it's worked it okay, I like the whole concept and idea, it gives it a whole ironic and literal context. To be honest though, it was difficult to find pictures suitable for some of the less obvious ones. For example, a lot are simply places in Switzerland e.g. Zurich, Geneva etc. The Typeface I used for "The Real Swiss Typeface" is Avenir, not just because I like it, but because it's neutral enough to add the exact juxtaposition I was looking for; literal vs actual Swiss Style Typeface.