Happiness is the Consequence of a Personal Effort
An Exploration in Design with Typography
An Exploration in Design with Typography
The process photos you see below are drawn from an assignment called the “Quotation Project”. My task was to select a favorite quotation or poem and find a way to express the sentiment typographically. I wanted to chose something that represented where I was in my life right now, but I also wanted it to be open enough that others would also easily appreciate it.
After a lot of consideration, I remembered a specific quote from a book I had recently read:
Happiness is the consequence of a personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, an
sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the
manifestation of your own blessings.
I remembered the quote from a book called “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert and I instantly identified with it. This quote has become a reminder of how I chose to live my life: happiness will always be there for me if I choose it. I wanted to represent this quote in a visually exciting way and went through many drafts with the layout of the actual word placement; Eventually I set up the quote to have a slight resemblance to stairs, which is another reminder that there are steps to happiness, that happiness is not just on the ground floor of life. I also wanted to use color and decided to paint two watercolor textures to incorporate into my design. The first painting in different shades of yellow was to be used as the fill for the word Happiness. The second watercolor included different shades of yellows, reds, blues, representing the idea that happiness is not constant or without challenge. There are times that anger or frustration (red) or even sadness or discomfort (blue) will come around, but as long as you continue to strive for happiness (yellow), it will manifest itself into your life.
After drawing out the letter forms and scanning everything, I began playing around with how things would look as a full composition until I was happy with the final result. Paper made a world of difference in my design — I chose an Oriental paper similar to rice-paper but with a soft fabric feel. After printing the composition, the paper absorbed the colors and brought them alive, looking almost as if I had painted the composition on the textured paper.
After a lot of consideration, I remembered a specific quote from a book I had recently read:
Happiness is the consequence of a personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, an
sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the
manifestation of your own blessings.
I remembered the quote from a book called “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert and I instantly identified with it. This quote has become a reminder of how I chose to live my life: happiness will always be there for me if I choose it. I wanted to represent this quote in a visually exciting way and went through many drafts with the layout of the actual word placement; Eventually I set up the quote to have a slight resemblance to stairs, which is another reminder that there are steps to happiness, that happiness is not just on the ground floor of life. I also wanted to use color and decided to paint two watercolor textures to incorporate into my design. The first painting in different shades of yellow was to be used as the fill for the word Happiness. The second watercolor included different shades of yellows, reds, blues, representing the idea that happiness is not constant or without challenge. There are times that anger or frustration (red) or even sadness or discomfort (blue) will come around, but as long as you continue to strive for happiness (yellow), it will manifest itself into your life.
After drawing out the letter forms and scanning everything, I began playing around with how things would look as a full composition until I was happy with the final result. Paper made a world of difference in my design — I chose an Oriental paper similar to rice-paper but with a soft fabric feel. After printing the composition, the paper absorbed the colors and brought them alive, looking almost as if I had painted the composition on the textured paper.
