My favorite things to make usually have a physical and digital form. Take photos, for instance. I can print a lot of them, inexpensively, from my phone (wild). But the ease of texting a picture of my kids to their grandparents is also amazing. Easy.
Fonts are wonderful things to create, because they often start with a sketch, then go completely digital, only for me to experience them by surprise in some physical form like a book cover, packaging design, or some other nice thing someone else made. Like when an indie film uses my font Typocopia for their title, and all of a sudden it is on a movie poster (Captain Fantastic, below).
Laser cutting is fun because I get to use a two dimensional space/thinking to create a three dimensional object. I just don’t have access to a laser cutter anymore.
Video, however, is the one elusive thing that I love to make, but will forever be tied to a screen, unless I do some experiential installation or non-conventional output. But who is going to see that? There’s also Gifpop, which is actually really cool. We have a few of those. More specifically, I’m talking video for phones.
I enjoy creating videos and they’re easy to share. 10 years ago if I saw a “vertical video” somewhere I’d be mad that the person didn’t turn their camera (phone) to make it horizontal, the way it should be. I was so naive. I didn’t even see the format change coming. Mostly because I was late to get a nice smartphone. But also because I was experiencing most videos on a desktop screen, where of course a vertical video looks weird. Now if I see a horizontal video I either sigh and turn my phone or just ignore it completely. Unless I’m watching a movie or show, which I do on a laptop or TV screen, the majority of video I’m consuming these days is…vertical, in the palm of my hand.
And now I’m the last person to adopt 9×16 video. But I’m doing my best to make it work. Turns out, I like making reels. To add to the confusion, I also make music (and like using it in videos) but a lot of people probably are scrolling through with their phones muted. So aside from the very desktop-friendly type videos I have on this site Default Sans, for example) I’m making videos now to fill a phone (see below), without having to turn it. It’s new to me, but that’s not a bad thing.
Follow along on Instagram if you want to see these as I create them: @tyfromtheinternet
