Font Poem Rationale

I chose the particular excerpt from the song because All American Rejects is my favorite band and I felt that it had a powerful meaning behind it. Every word brings a different image in my mind. For example side could literally mean a part of your body but to me it means waking up with a different personality. First we learn to walk then learned to scream can be intrepreted in numerous ways. Regardless if you break it down it means you start small like a whimper then work your way to something bigger like a roar to get heard. I picked several different fonts with only the ‘to’ and ‘I’ as the same font, so, 18 different fonts for 22 words. I than altered them through Photoshop using the transformation tool; special effects, fonts, colors and spacing that matched the particular word appropriately.

The fonts for each word: I (Matura mt script capitals), Woke (Braggadocio), Up (Copperplate gothic bold), On (Mesquite Std), This (Rad std), Side (Brush script std), Thought (Abadi mt condensed extra bold), It (Birch std), Was (Curlz mt), A (Arial), Dream (Cracked), At (Rosewood std), First (Stencil), We (Synchro let), Learned#1 (Umbra std), To (Prestige elite std), Walk (Banco std), Then (Critter std), Learned#2 (Pompeia std), Scream (Quake std).

Some of the effects, and tweaks for each word: I (red outer-shadow) Woke (spaced, multiply, inner shadow, satin, a variety of red per each letter), Up (skewed using tool under free transform, crisp font), On (outer glow, yellow), Side (vertical text, satin, opacity 70%), Thought (free transform diagonal, 2 letters have color), It (bevel & emboss, pattern overlay), A (twist, pattern overlay), Dream (twist, each letter has a different shade of blue, lowered opacity, outer glow) At (white font with outer glow, increased size for added effect), First (wave), We (squeeze, pattern overlay), Learned#1 (Inner glow), Walk (inner glow), Then (outer glow and spacing), Learned#2 (pattern overlay), Scream (inflate, inner shadow, outer glow, inner glow, bevel emboss, color overlay, gradient overlay)

I encountered only two problems. The first was before I even started the project. The default mode in Photoshop was in bitmap instead of RGB. Hence, I couldn’t add layers for each word or even start. The second was when the person sitting next to me started the project late and asked how to make the background black. He didn’t have the background layer selected so it wasn’t working. Eventually I told him to select it, then edit > fill > background > black.

I’m most proud of the different characteristics from each word - In other words, the uniqueness. The vibrant colors, and positions of the words really bring out the inner emotion of the excerpt from the song. For example the ‘on’ is glowing like a light bulb and is actually placed on the ‘this’ and ‘scream’, ‘at’, ‘dream’ and ‘woke’ particularly stand out –acting as eye candy. It may seem simple in some parts but in reality each word had a tremendous amount of thought and creativity involved. The font poem has an array of different attributes, all with a hidden personal meaning.