Noise
14 x 12
One goal of the project was to express the word without using it. For this, I turned to Constructivism. A period of reformation struck Russia with the Bolshevik Revolution, and closely following this era of political turmoil came Constructivism, headed by artists in the newly formed USSR, one of which was Alexander Rodchenko. His “Books Please” poster was where I found the cutout of Lilya Brik, shouting into a bold photomontage.
Using the letters “shhhh,” in an ironic twist to indicate that at times silence is the loudest noise, I arranged the letters flying out of her mouth. For additional contrast, I used only red, white, and black, to emphasize the boldness in the word. While constructivism was a time filled with political noise, revolutionary noise, the photomontage style reflects the bold opinions and ideas throughout the time period. Because of this, I thought it fitting to reflect the zeitgeist of a particularly loud period of history in the portrayal of ‘noise.’
‘Noise,’ a simple word, but in its portrayal more expressive. In order to capture and convey the meaning of noise through typography, I began on tracing paper, exploring different variations of the word. When I first heard ‘noise,’ I automatically thought of the vibrating speakers, and the way they bounced and bulged outwards with each deep base chord. In order to reflect this frequency, I shifted the font outwards, keeping it a simple sans-serif with a new shape. Then, I traced over this design in chalk. It was the only material I could find that would show up on black construction paper, but the effect it created introduced a new aspect of the word. The chalk gave the ‘noise’ a static effect- fuzzy around the edges like the sound that comes out of the radio between stations. With this new element, I once again turned to tracing paper in an effort to capture the static. In the end, I kept the chalk effect and finalized the font.