Rain, by Patty Griffin, was my song choice due to its emotional appeal. This song made me reflect on past

experiences typically caused from high levels of drama, pain, or suffering. The song relates to me as a story

of a struggle that through perseverance leads to positive changes, also known as the calm after the storm.

 

The overall melodramatic tone of this song, with its acoustic appeal, gives it a very soothing feel. It is meant

to bring emotions forward and make you reflect upon a challenging, difficult, or life-altering experience. Even

though the song seems dreary, it possesses a very uplifting and optimistic feel, which helps the listener keep

pushing forward to receive the positive message by the its end.

 

Through further research, I have decided to portray my piece with a standar accordion layout format. This

layout would allow my story to flow, representing a rhythm as steady as the songs melody. By the end of the

piece, the overall feel will be much lighter, because the artist, like the listener, has overcome the obstacle and

is less burdened by the now passing storm. The typeface that I will be using to complete this assignment is

Century Gothic. After reviewing my research, I have discovered that this typeface is very geometric, which

would be ideal to represent the harsh, unforgiving strength of the storm. Also, the typeface has very rounded

features which would portray the softer message relayed through the lyrics. I want to represent this piece

with lots of contrasting letters and words that in the end will highlight the emotional aspects of the song.

This emphasis will be shown through the use of the color black, and its various gray shades, to convey the

altering emotional factors.

This process took a lot of research, trial, and error to understand the different arrangements of type. My overall focus was to create a piece with lots of contrast, in both shade, size, and boldness, in order to emphasize certain parts of the song the portrayed the strongest relation to the overall meaning behind the lyrics. I chose to portray it this way so that the viewer would see that the ordeal was “Hard” and that the individual would have had to overcome “Big” obstacles through the struggle. I also chose to do clustering in areas to show inner struggle. This would be where she feel almost overwhelmed by the internal struggle but seems to be able to see the brighter side and push through. The lighter or softer areas are meant to be the moments of calmness or peace she gets to experience, because even through pain we often have uplifting moments that help pull u toward the end. The final slide, I decided to keep everything in a square away from the intimate flow maintained throughout because I wanted to show the viewer that she has separated herself from the pain and was leaving the storm behind. Also as you get to the end and arrive at the chorus “rows & rows of big dark clouds” you will notice its predominately darker here; this is because I wanted to symbolize how the struggle gets worse before it gets better so the contrast builds up to this point gets really thick or difficult and then lightens back up towards the end.