Studio Brief 2: Illustrator

For the first few illustrator sessions we were taught some basics to help us with Brief 2. We learnt how to make shapes and how to manipulate objects in the program. I thought these sessions were useful as I have used illustrator very little before, and its quite different from Photoshop.

After scanning the letter 'A' in, I placed the original drawing in an illustrator file and typed an 'A' in Garamond bold next to it in a similar size, to make the crossover of manipulation clearer and easier. I drew a box that was a similar size to the gap in the 'A', which I laid over the letter and aligned it with the original.

We were introduced to the pathfinder in the earlier workshops, which now has come in handy so that I can cut out the two areas of the 'A'. I clicked 'minus front' which cut out the area of the letter, leaving a gap in the object like below.

I then added the other empty segment to the letter, so it was then a replica of the original manipulation I drew by hand. 

I then experimented with different weights of the letter in terms of the empty space, making a few different variations.

The one I prefer is the letter with the third widest space. It doesn't break up the letter so that it is not legible, yet it still has enough impact. I think the most extreme variation I created isn't very legible as a letterform, whereas the A with very thin spacing manipulation still looks too whole; I want to portray different segments.