Great Expectations- Conceptual Activity

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Chapter 1


My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Conceptual approach inspired by Chapter 1- Great expectations 

Conceptual Examples 

This concept relates to death as the character explains the loss of relatives. 

This concept explores hierarchy to emphasis the context of the character name. The hierarchy is explored through style and size of the type. 

Example created exploring shape structure. How does this impact the text? 

This activity was useful at applying concepts to make the text more encaging and visually exciting. This will help gain typographic skills and focus more on developing my skill to create conceptual meanings and layouts. In my opinion the concept created is not as strong, but to develop this further The layout out squares and lines could be applied to emphasise a grid layout perhaps inspired by mathematical layouts. 

For example in Great Expectations an example of mathematical grid layouts is adapted. 

To develop my work further, further research is needed to create meaning and understanding for the reader.