Introduction
The second project of my Communication Design Fundamental course this semester focuses on Forms and Composition. It is designed for people to explore how even the simplest objects are able to communicate different messages and implication when they are placed in different ways. During the time of this project, I was aiming to create compositions that express different (even opposite) meanings using only solid squares. I was also trying to use squares to create one graph that illustrated a reversible figure/ground relationship.
Part I: Sketching Thumbnails
I began by sketching thumbnails for 3 pairs of words: Playful vs Serious, Noisy vs Quiet, Dangerous vs Safe, using solid squares only. I did some brainstorming and random sketching, and eventually formed 5 different designs for each word (total of 30 thumbnails). Some of the thumbnails are able to express the message by themselves, while others achieve this by contrasting within pairs. For example, the second design of “dangerous” directly gives such dangerous feelings (massive objects falling down), while the 5th pair of playful and serious has to be viewed together to detect the message.
Part II: Digitalization
After collecting and organizing my initial ideas, I worked on moving my hand sketches to digital images using Adobe Illustrator. Meanwhile, I narrowed down my focus to only two pairs: “Noisy vs Quiet” and “Dangerous vs Safe” because I was more curious about doing further exploration among them. Below is the first draft of the digital illustrations. The selection for the “Dangerous vs Quiet” was suggested by my instructor and TA. And I explored two different ideas for “Noisy vs Quiet”.
It is worth mentioning that many of my digital illustrations were not included in my initial sketches. During of the process of digitalization, I constant review and re-think about the compositions and make changes to them. I even came up with new ideas (such as the first version of Quiet) while working on them. Then for the next step I wanted to refine my works and finalize the choice of design for further in-depth iterations.
Feedbacks & Refinements:
- The feedback that I received from my instructor was that the second design of “Noisy” actually provided a feeling closer to “Playful”, and I agreed with this opinion.
- After careful consideration, I felt that the second version of "Quiet" might also fit more under a "Playful" circumstance since they looked a lot like decorations when having celebrations. So I discarded this design.
- Another problem I had is that the first design of “Quiet” was very literal and might not meet the requirement of the project. The designs for this project are supposed to be abstract. For this particular design, I was imagining a quiet night sky: the bottom squares represents buildings or skylines and the top squares represents stars in the sky. However, the instructor said that the star-like part was still quite nice for “Quiet”, so I decided to continue using that part of the idea.
Part III: Further Digital Iterations
Based on the feedbacks, I started to explore ways to optimize my designs so that they convey the meanings in the best way. The first step was to try different variations of “Dangerous vs Safe”. I applied some minor adjustments to the angle, position, and size of the squares, and then compare them to find the best ones. See the graph below. Based on the combination my own thoughts and opinions from my friends, the second “Dangerous” and the fourth “Safe” won.
For the composition of “Noisy”, I made the original compositions more twisted and jagged to add a more crowded and uncomfortable vibe.
Then according the project description I was required to add one color to one of the pairs, and I chose to add yellow to “Noisy & Quiet” pair. I thought the extra color really add more effect to the visuals and also emphasized the messages.
Part IV: Creating Figure/Ground Illustration
Apart from the compositions to express meanings of words, we were also asked to create a black and white figure/ground composition to experience the relationship between positive and negative spaces.
I had never tried to create such illustrations before so the progress was very hard at the begining. The first design I created was inspired by the “buildings” in the original “Quiet” composition (which was discarded as previously mentions). Here is what it looks like.
This composition was reversible, which means the shape of the black area and the shape of the white area were actually the same, just flipped. Although it was on the right track, feedbacks I received indicated that the black was much more dominant than the white. People were more likely to concentrate on the black area while consider the white area as background, which suggest a visual unbalance.
However, since I managed to create the first figure/ground composition, I became more confident and gained more inspiration, and here were a broader set of figure/ground ideas I tried.
I really liked the third design and I further explored some transformations of it.
However, I still liked the original version the most. Generally, the illustration looked like moving to the right or pointing to the right. The black areas are formed by same arrow-like shape with unequal gaps (the gaps became smaller as move to the right). The white areas are arrow-like shape of decreasing width or thickness, but they are equally placed in the space.
Part V: Final Design
Here are the feedbacks I got from the critique session. Thanks to my classmates and my instructor Anna for the feedbacks!
Part VI: Reflection
Based on the feedbacks I received from the critique, the first thing I can definitely improve is the coloring of the Noisy composition. Since the Quiet composition (star-like pattern) goes the best with yellow, I also applied yellow to the Noisy composition but it appeared to reduce the visual intensity. Also I learned that the effect of noisy would be compromised by large squares — scale them down a little bit would be a good step to try.
Moreover, for the Quiet composition the negative space can be reduced to achieve better balance the whole space, and for the figure/ground composition the placement of the black squares can be further carefully considered to present a reversible visual effect.
Overall, I super like this project. From drawing squares on paper to in-depth iteration of digital illustrations, I gained more and more comprehensive understanding of the communication design principles introduced in class. I also learned how to better connect the visuals and the messages I want to convey to my audience. I can’t wait to learn and practice more on communication design on future projects!
