Experiments at ivanwlam.com

Because of the explosion in interest in graphic design as well as the Design-It-Yourself “I Have Photoshop” mentality in our culture, I have been noticing posters and ads abusing the 3D lettering effect, elongating the depth beyond any sense, it’s ridiculous. I want to point that out by extremely exaggerating this effect in a conceptual typeface I call Ridiculous.

There’s no catalog of the typface because it’s more of a concept. You can pretty much create the effect with any normal typeface.

I’m not necessarily completely against using the 3D effect; I just think it needs to be used with care and reason.

If you want to show that your text is three-dimensional, give it a bit of relief, but not too much.

If you want to abstract the form of the 3D effect, do it with intent and make it known that it is there on purpose.

Below is my attempt to draw the letterforms in Illustrator.

But then I remembered that there was a 3D function in Illustrator. It creates a small bit of perspective, which was not what I wanted. But overall, it still got the point across.

This is the template object I used to create the six compositions above. Every time I look at the middle part and noticed nothing but parallel lines, I am reminded of how ridiculous this is.

Notes from 5/11/09
Ridiculously long 3-D letterform relief.