Greek Letterform:
For this project, I selected an ancient Greek letterform as the center of my artwork. My given perimeters are it must be 8” x 8”; I must create it in Adobe Illustrator; I may only use the letterform and simple shapes (sparingly) as my graphic elements; I may not distort the letterform such as skewing, shadowing, or applying art filters; it must only be 2-colors (spot-color tints are acceptable), and I must write an accompanying descriptive narrative to be placed in the piece—Oh, and I must create 4 versions. Sounds simple, right? I chose xi as my Greek letter. It is written as Ξ (upper case) and ξ (lower case). Since I had never attempted this type of project before, I wanted to see if I could emulate some specific typographical periods. In regards to my accompanying narrative, I chose to compose something tongue-in-cheek as counterbalance to the graphic design. In case you cannot clearly read it in the art pieces, here it is:
Many, many moons ago (roughly 3,000 years, if you must know), the Greek alphabet came into existence. “And how?” you may ask. Why the Greeks stole it from the Phoenicians—in broad daylight, no less! The 15th letter in the Greek alphabet is xi. The uppercase version is Ξ. The lowercase version is ξ. In ancient times, xi was pronounced [ksi] which is difficult to say, so today drunken frat boys say [zai]. For some reason, the Greeks decided to use three bars for the ksi double consonant instead of an x. But what do you expect of ancient marauding alphabet thieves?
Enjoy.
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