This is what I found out:
SIBLINGS: Younger brother.
BIRTHDAY: July 23rd (Cancer/Leo)
EARLIEST MEMORY: On holiday in France running along, she fell over and cut her leg and went running back to show her Mum.
PERSON YOU ADMIRE: Her Mum- because she manages to do so much.
MOST TREASURED POSSESSION: Mac.
FILM: Anchorman, or comedies and chick flicks.
DESIRED SUPER POWER: Teleportation- to visit friends, family and dog in India and Dubai.
EXTINCT ANIMAL TO BRING BACK: Diplodocus.
MUSIC: Lots, not heavy.
HOBBIES: Golf (joint family activity) and Horse Riding.
FAVOURITE ANIMAL: Dog.
FAVOURITE SHOP: Forever 21.
ACTOR TO STAR IN FILM OF LIFE: Jessica Alba.
DINNER PARTY GUESTS: Russell Peters (comedian).
WHAT MAKES HER UNHAPPY: Bad weather, being cold, being away from family and friends.
FANCY DRESS: Cowgirl.
PHRASE: Go for it!
OTHER INFORMATION: Good cook, Quiet-ish, Half Indian/Half English, Lived in Middle East until last year.
From all this information, I created a mood board to give me a bit of a visual kick start as I was beginning to struggle on what to do. After much pondering I came up with four words to help me down the right path; fun, quiet, girlie, travel.
I thought of manipulating an existing font so that all the bowls were Apple logos, but then I realised it doesn't really say much about Maya. After experimentations with a range of fonts, that were mostly focussing on the word, girlie, I found a font called Afarat IBN Blady, which is an arabic style font. I thought this would be appropriate as using a font like this would be communicating Maya's background, as her home is in Dubai where they speak Arabic.
Maya's name in the font...
At a group crit, I listened to others ideas, and gave input and suggestions on people's work, when I presented my idea the group as a whole felt the letterforms as they are originally, are a bit harsh so I needed to soften them to make it more appropriate to Maya, also they commented on the fact that the letters were a solid black which made them quite bold, something else that wasn't quite apt. However, they did like how I had gone for something completely different, which was comforting as this was out of my comfort zone, and I didn't feel all that confident about my idea.
To manipulate the letterforms were tricky, and I felt like I had gone for something quite challenging so it was fun, but I didn't want to alter the letters too much and lose the whole Arabic feel, so I softened the edges around the letters and adjusted some of the heights. It was at this point that I was beginning to worry about putting logic to the font, as the letters varied in size, height and width so to try and adjust them to a standard height and width would be a) quite traumatising! and b) visually, it would not work. There were a few elements that were the same throughout however.
On the right is the original letter E, and on the left shows the manipulated version...
I chose to do a black outline of each letter so it would really emphasise the feminine shapes, i trialled outlines with other colours but the black appeared to work better. After three attempts at tracing the letters onto A1 I finally had a final piece, now I had to make the name badge. For this I just used Maya's first name, and the letters had no fill with a pink and blue stroke, the reason to pick these two as a colour choice are simply that these are Maya's favourite colours. It was quite tricky getting the letterforms to work altogether, because they work much better as individual letters rather than joined. I wanted to join each letter up so it still looked like Arabic script but the text wasn't very legible especially as the 'Y' is a strange letter anyway. In the end I did much prefer the badge, it was lighter and certainly brighter and I felt it communicated Maya (below).
To me, the first 'A' and the 'Y' vaguely represent a smiley face, the bowl of the 'A' could be an eye, and the descender of the'Y' could be a smile. This isn't that noticeable but is still representative of Maya.
When it came to presenting my work, I did struggle due to a persistent, annoying tickly cough which made it hard to talk, but I think people knew roughly what I was trying to get at. Other than that, I think I did okay.
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