Project 2: Form and Composition (9/1)
For Project 2, we were given 3 word pairs:
- playful + serious
- dangerous + safe
- noisy + quiet
and our task was to create five sketches for each word, and five sketches for the concept of Figure-ground.
I started off by just creating patterns for certain words (such as serious), and quickly realized that different angles and sizes of squares could help evoke certain feelings.
I intentionally placed some squares diagonally (playful, dangerous) while others were upright and seemed more stiff (serious, safe).
For safe and quiet, I played around with equilibrium and interacting squares of different sizes. With safe in particular, grouping was a common Gestalt principle that I used.
Figure-ground ones were a lot of fun. I found that it was difficult to put different angles of squares in the same figure-ground and still achieve the effect of white squares on a black background, but I varied the angle upon which the squares were set in the thumbnail.
Project 2 update: More sketches (9/3)
After playing around with Illustrator during class, we were tasked with sketching a few more ideas for our word pairs.
I found that sharing my previous sketches with my peers was really useful — it helped me to explain my thought process as I drafted my sketches and gave me a clear direction for the next portion of the process.
For Project 2, we were given 3 word pairs:
- playful + serious
- dangerous + safe
- noisy + quiet
and our task was to create five sketches for each word, and five sketches for the concept of Figure-ground.
I started off by just creating patterns for certain words (such as serious), and quickly realized that different angles and sizes of squares could help evoke certain feelings.
I intentionally placed some squares diagonally (playful, dangerous) while others were upright and seemed more stiff (serious, safe).
For safe and quiet, I played around with equilibrium and interacting squares of different sizes. With safe in particular, grouping was a common Gestalt principle that I used.
Figure-ground ones were a lot of fun. I found that it was difficult to put different angles of squares in the same figure-ground and still achieve the effect of white squares on a black background, but I varied the angle upon which the squares were set in the thumbnail.
Project 2 update: More sketches (9/3)
After playing around with Illustrator during class, we were tasked with sketching a few more ideas for our word pairs.
I found that sharing my previous sketches with my peers was really useful — it helped me to explain my thought process as I drafted my sketches and gave me a clear direction for the next portion of the process.
Project 2 update: Digitizing and refining (9/6)
Now that I had ideas out on paper, it was time to see how they would look in digital form.
From left to right are the progression of my ideas. I found that some ideas looked extremely similar to how they were sketched while others fell a bit flat once the edges were sharpened and the fill completely solid.
For Noisy, I wanted to evoke a sense of activity and interaction much like the clamor and buzz of a public space. The left picture shows my first digitized iteration: while the interaction is present, I felt that the straight, lined up squares communicated more “coexistence” than “activity and hubbub”.
Drawing directly from my sketches, I angled the squares a bit more and standardized their sizes to give a sense of smaller squares moving about from activity center to activity center. I liked this much better than before, but I felt that there was still too much space.
By adding even more smaller squares, the right-most iteration seems to have the most activity and chaotic energy of “noisy”. I made sure that no squares were angled horizontally/vertically, which lends a messiness and noisiness to the composition.
For Quiet, I knew that I wanted to use the Gestalt principle of equilibrium, because peace and quiet go hand in hand. While I pictured gravity being at work in my iterations, I liked the idea of the squares defying this gravity. By allowing the top three squares on the left design to “float” and the square to balance on its tip in the rightmost design, weightlessness and balance evokes a sense of tranquility and lack of clamor.
Danger — the sense of being unbalanced, uncertain, or unaware of something looming overhead. I started with the leftmost iteration as an adaptation of sketch #5 for Serious. While I liked the sense of the sharp points as points of danger for the small center square, I felt that the grouping of the larger squares was too balanced and lacked the chaotic energy that “danger” gives off.
I turned to gravity and played around with angles and sizes to give a sense of precarious situations and loads. I quite like the chaotic nature of the rightmost composition.
When I think of Safe, closed groups, protectors, and solidarity come to mind. The first composition is directly from a sketch. It was one of those that seemed like it would work on paper, but fell flat once digitized. The spacing was difficult to settle on — I would shift a group slightly to the upper-right corner, and suddenly the farthest square would become a triangle, or I would move a smaller group more towards the others, and the space would look oddly unbalanced.
I moved on to my other ideas. Here, groups were still made, but I used decreasing size to give a sense of extension and continued safety. I felt that the innermost squares were difficult to see, so I colored the innermost square of this design. When I stepped back again, I was a bit hesitant. Was this Safe or was this Dangerous? Did the larger squares resemble protective barriers or threatening guards?
I kept this as it was and continued to another one of my original sketches. Just as no individual is exactly like another individual, I knew that I wanted to incorporate sizes into this one. As I put color in, the composition started to look more cohesive, almost “cozier”.
Interaction. Liveliness. This was the sense I wanted evoke for playful. I made the first iteration on the left from one of my original sketches, playing around with placement of the squares within each other at different angles. I intentionally created the asymmetry both horizontally and vertically, making on of the towers taller than the other, but created a small “center” where the two smallest squares were headed to interact and “play”.
A similar desire for asymmetry and non-straight angles led to the rightmost composition. However, I felt that with so many black sharp angles, the composition loses a bit of playfulness and veers into danger.
For the middle two, I wanted to create a sense of playfulness through the use of dynamic sizes and angles. The sizes in the middle-left composition create a sort of visual effect when the eye moves, and in the middle-right, the squares moving in a smooth curve give a more muted playfulness that reminds me of children on a swing or slide.
When I think of Serious, especially serious squares, I think of straight lines, standardized sizes, extension. First, I digitized my initial sketch #1 for Serious. I liked the order, but I was approaching the rectangle problem (where the cut-off squares seem like rectangles).
I switched tactics and consulted the Gestalt principles. I found that pairing up the squares gave the composition some interest, and I really like the effect of the multiple groups in straight formations. I decided to multiply the formations to see what would happen.
The rightmost iteration is made up of orderly, neat rows and columns and stretches over the entire space. Just like rows upon rows of poker-faced, camouflaged, buzz-cut soldiers, it seems very serious indeed.
Figure-ground was fairly tricky due to the pitfalls of arranging solid black squares together. I realized early on that the tilting of multiple black squares would result in a white negative space that would no longer resemble squares. Another realization was that large squares that feel off the side of the artboard would start to look like rectangles.
By shuffling and standardizing the size of the squares from my sketches, an idea for this offset, checkered pattern came about. I made multiple rows of it and immediately felt very proud. That is — until I actually squinted at it myself to see the figure-ground.
It did the job — I could see white squares in the negative space between the black squares — but was very busy. Frankly, starting at it for too long gave me a headache.
By drawing inspiration from the comfortably large sizes of the squares of my first figure-ground digitized iteration, I made the pattern much larger. Voila!
Project 2 update: Refining and finalizing (9/10)
Now that I had a few iterations of each, it was time to finish up refining and decide which of the iterations would be a part of the final print.
Though I liked my compositions for safe and dangerous, I felt that my compositions for quiet and noisy were strong. I decided to experiment with color on quiet and noisy.
Immediately, I realized that in noisy, the yellow that I had originally picked for the yellow-and-black color scheme of traffic warnings and signs appeared noisy, cheerful, and almost lent a social nature to the many squares. I also liked how the yellow in quiet drew a clear distinction between the bottom and top square, almost a sense of lightness on top.
I liked these compositions, but I know that feedback is very useful for adding that last detail to strengthen the composition further.
Feedback from Julia and Anna led to more squares being added in noisy on top of the larger and medium-sized squares. I really liked this suggestion — this added even more depth to the noise, as yellow squares were visible over the black and vice versa.
I leaned towards the soldier-formation for serious, but I felt that so many pairs would take away attention from the square’s stiff formation and draw attention to the sheer number of squares in the composition. In this case, less was more to focus on more carefully.
I decided to go with the asymmetric playful composition with an element of gravity in its interpretation of playful because I liked the interaction of the squares.
During the critique during class today, I noticed that many playful/serious compositions made use of free space rather than gravity, which was interesting. I liked very much how some of my peers interpreted their figure-ground pieces, and I appreciated comments about how the colors, sizes, and angles in my noisy/quiet composition helped it to communicate well.
Though a lot of refining and reworking, the final products were worth it, and I very much enjoyed Project 2!
