I am, admittedly, the worst at doing things for myself.
Here is an example: I absolutely love making music. I have a band I make music with in a collaborative manner. On the side I will occasionally write things on my own, for myself. When it comes to finishing my own solo music? Oh wait, just kidding that never actually happens.
I have unfinished songs from 6 years ago that have been collecting metaphorical dust on the hundreds of shelves in my brain. For some reason when it comes to order of importance of getting things done, personal projects will always be at the bottom of the list. I’m good at generating ideas, and then never fully investing in them. Maybe because there are too many ideas and I can’t sort out which are of any value and which will equate to time wasted. It’s paralyzing.
I think in all reality, pursuing a personal project that I would follow through with would have to be accessible on a day to day basis to do whenever I find myself with down time. I have had this idea of getting better at hand lettering and testing myself with making different alphabets with an overarching theme for each of the letters. I started sketching this idea a few years ago, but I haven’t given it time since a few rough sketch ideas. The central theme was called “Alphabet of Atrocities” and each letter had a corresponding creepy noun. For example: “A” is for Amphisbaena. A two headed snake, with its body forming the strokes of the letter.
If I were to carry out this project, it would not be too expensive to create and it wouldn’t require a lot of resources. Ideally, I would do some research on how hand-type designers manipulate text and embellish, what programs are best to render hand-type, and best practices for creating a cohesive body of work.
For resources, I could buy a Skillshare subscription and take masterclasses from people like Jessica Hische and other hand-type professionals. It would also be beneficial to some YouTube searching for different effects and how to execute them via tutorials of my design programs. Alternatively, I could check with my professors for resource recommendations.
To continue advancing my skills with other Adobe software, I don’t have to limit myself to designing hand rendered type solely in Illustrator. I could experiment with these letterforms becoming graphic animations, design them to be used in AR, create an entire book or zine based off of the rendered type, the list could go on and on. This project could have many legs and help me develop skills in many different areas of design.
As for the timeline, pragmatically I would focus on one central theme and develop the full alphabet as graphic renderings first. Considering my tendency for putting my personal projects on the end of the list, I would allow myself the timeline of a year to get this done. From research, skill development, concept development and physically producing the work (while also juggling life’s other many busy facets) I think this would be a realistic timeline. From there I would give myself extended time to develop animated graphics from the designed letterforms, and probably cherry pick my favorite pieces to build into animations.
The monetary investment is very low. A few payments to subscriptions for a year would likely be under $200 to produce. If I made a physical item of the work (ie: a book or zine) I would probably add another $800-1,000 for budgeting. Luckily, since I am a printer I could save some money on paying for labor and just pay for materials needed for printing and binding. Love me a thrifty project I can create from beginning to end with my own hands!