Initial Sketches
Playful vs Serious
For playful, I imitated softer shapes, utilizing more angles and variation to depict a carefree feeling. In contrast, I used bolder, sharper, and more utilitarian shapes to create a more stiff composition that conveyed a more serious tone.
Noisy vs Quiet
To illustrate noisy, I experimented with both rigid patterns and random orientations of the squares, busying the frame with many small squares to crowd the space. For quiet, I kept a lot more of the white space and faded away the shapes, imitating the way sound fades away.
Dangerous vs Safe
Using unbalanced compositions and leaning figures, the sketches evoked a sense of unstableness and danger. On the other hand, I used large shapes that often surrounded a middle section to demonstrate protection and safety.
I like the word pairs Playful vs Serious and Noisy vs Quiet and will continue experimenting with specific sketches.
Digitalizing Ideas
I started moving some ideas onto Illustrator. I noticed during this process that it was more rigid than sketching, which in ways made it harder to convey some ideas. For example, I was having a little more difficulty conveying playfulness with squares since the sharp corners often look more serious or dangerous.
Finalizing Designs
For playfulness, I decided to utilize random angling to convey a sense of fun and had squares go off the edge to make the design less rigid. On the other hand, I left very little space for serious, evoking a sense of confinement and pushing off the edge, but not allowing the shape to actually go out of the square.
For noisy and quiet, I implemented another color. The blue in noisy adds another layer of squares, adding more details to the design and filling up the space. This creates a sense of more fullness, similar to how noise fills a room. However, the subtlety of the blue color against the background reflects the different levels of noise that are in a space. However, for quiet the squares fade off in the middle, creating a feel of emptiness. Here, the blue acts more as a gradation rather than another level, making the design softer.
Finally, for figure ground I shaped the squares to avoid a middle shape, adding sharp angles and large shapes so the viewer can interpret it as they want.
