For Gail Anderson’s Just Type class Melissa Gorman (MFAD ’12) chose Passion Pit’s Sleepyhead, and used hand-drawn type along with some old type specimen scans. She was recently interview by HOW magazine about her work.

See the HOW Article Here .

Watch the Video Here.

It was a typographic music project at the School of Visual Arts’ that taught MFA student and designer Melissa Gorman some rockin’ new ways to express her creative self. Assigned in Gail Anderson’s “Just Type” class in the “Designer as Author” program, Gorman and her classmates were challenged to create a black-and-white, type-only music video. ??Gorman selected Passion Pit’s trippy tune “Sleepyhead,” because “I was looking for something I could interpret in a number of ways… something that was a little abstract. I felt I could have fun with it and the sound aligned with my aesthetic,” she explains.

And although Gorman’s final product is chock full of Z’s–there’s nothing snooze-worthy about her mesmerizing visuals. “I chose to use only the letter ‘Z’ to tell the abstract story of a character’s journey through different dreamscapes.” Since the music evoked a “handmade and slightly messy feel,” Gorman discovered that through a mixture of found type and her own hand-drawn letterforms, textures, and patterns–the pairing of the visuals and lyrics could be a good fit. And she was spot-on: The randomly shaped and scaled white ‘Zs’ floating, falling, and bouncing through the dark space was the perfect complement to Passion Pit’s dreamy song. ??Besides the opportunity to explore mixing her artwork and design sensibilities while listening to one of her favorite tunes, Gordon was totally psyched to learn design tools beyond the static page.

“The project definitely opened me up to motion design and a sense of timing. I don’t feel as limited in how I can express my ideas now.”??But more than just a school project, Gorman (who works under the studio name Company Standard) has a hardcore music loving-past. She’s worked as a DJ and definitely sees the correlation. “I think it’s no coincidence that a lot of designers have DJed at some point. The mediums both involve a certain aspect of collage, composition, and balance.”