Word Construction

Constructing these words was quite a chore, especially considering our lack of manpower. We approached these letters be creating the sides of the letters and then creating one face for each. Each of these letter facings were divided into trusses and cut out with a box knife. This effect mimics the structure of the crane.

Each letter was constructed from cardboard and held together by masking tape. One large problem we encountered was getting the letters to stand up straight and on their own. The “C” and the “G” were the biggest problems because of their rounded bottoms. The “G” also sagged considerably from the weight of the top half. In order to counteract this I added extra cardboard supports inside the “G”, hidden behind the trusses on the face. These extra supports helped the “G” stand up straight and unintentionally balanced out the whole letter so that it stood on its own. The “C” on the other hand was very unbalanced and the solution we came up with was to attach a wedge to the bottom of the letter that created a more stable base for the letter to stand on.

After these structural difficulties were dealt with we moved on to tackle the covering. We decided to use spray paint to coat the letters. We chose blue to match the crane. This decision was both good and bad. The spray paint was expensive and didn’t go nearly as far as we expected. By the end of the project we ended up using a total of 14 cans of spray paint. Although it was expensive it created a very nice even coating that was glossy, like the metal of the crane, and slightly water resistant (which came in handy on the critique day).