INTRO TO TYPO(graphy) - what it means to have a hippie name
In case you haven't got the chance to read my About Me page, hi! I'm Raras Theresa Farah Umaratih, and like many Indonesians, I don't have a family name. What I do have, though, is a name that's supposed to enlighten y'all with joy and compassion. Theresa Farah Umaratih means "source of happiness" or "bringer of happiness".
Why do I mention this? Because for our first Introduction to Typography class, we were asked to create a typography for our names, inspired by the meaning of our names.
Here were my initial sketches:
Not very glamorous, but I had to figure out what kind of movement I wanted to portray in my typography.
My next sketch was slightly more cohesive:
It certainly has got more dancing movement to it, and that's what I think when I hear the word "happy"---dancing and smiling. I also wanted to use bright or neon colours, to further emphasise the unicorn-farting happiness. This typography is certainly dancing, though I'm not sure about smiling. It just screams old-fashioned to me, something you'd see on an ice cream truck, not on a 16-year-old girl who wears oversized sweaters and Doc Martens (or so people tell me---I don't know what brand they are).
So I started alternating between no-nonsense straight lines and curves, just to see what kind of effect they'll produce:
And that's when I decided to go hippie. Someone in my class once called me a hippie, and it seems fitting somehow. Hippies always seem to be happy, almost gullibly so. Perhaps it's drugs...? (Hey, not judging!) So in the end, I went with the whole hippie thing and produced:
If there was any initiation test into hippie-ness, this would be it.
Like I said, I wanted my typography to sport lots of movement, dancing, and smiling. I alternated between bold and thin lines to create more contrast and shifts your eye from one line to another. The "Farah" is more solid than the others, because I want to differentiate between the three words.
Also, I did not include "Raras" here. Although Raras is what people call me on an everyday basis, it's not on my birth certificate. It's more of a nickname.
On a random note, the power went out when I was halfway through the T in Theresa, so I had to do the rest of the typography under a flashlight. Not my idea of a Wednesday night... but hey, the trials and tribulations of a graphic designer, right?
Overall, it was an interesting exercise. It made me think of my name more than I have ever done before. It made me consider who I am as a person, and how much the meaning of my name influences that.