Part I: Sketching thumbnails
Rigid + Fluid
For the word rigid, I wanted to show the inability to be bent of forced out of shape. Another way I interpreted this was by having many large masses that showed a certain stiffness.
The first thing I thought about for the word fluid is liquids and gases, something that has so fixed shape and is flexible. In order to demonstrate this, I wanted to mimic the movement of waves and smooth curved paths.
Clumsy + Graceful
In order to demonstrate clumsiness, I wanted to show the idea of falling and tripping over. I also tried expressing a broken structure as if it has been hit over.
The first thing that came to mind when exploring the word “grace” was a ballerina. I explored this idea by trying to express the physique and movements of a ballerina and a sense of balance them have.
Rhythmic + Erratic
I think rhythm and order have a very similar meaning and I wanted to try expressing this in terms of a sequence of continuous events to create a pattern.
Expressing erratic was pretty hard since it just seems like creating a mess without a system.When approaching this, I was trying to achieve some balance in terms of space and pair them up with elements used in the rhythmic design.
Part II: Digital Iterations
Before I finalize any choice of word pairs or start thinking of new pairs, I wanted to first digitalize all my brainstorming ideas. Not only will this help me familiarize with illustrator, I hope that this iteration would give me new insight as to how to approach this assignment
rigid and fluid
clumsy and graceful
rhythmic and erratic
Iteration 1
Using a word pair of your choice, create one composition for each word using black and one other color. The background color should be white. Squares may be different sizes. Both compositions should be printed on one page.
I chose the word pair ‘rigid’ and ‘fluid’ for this part of the assignment, iterating on my previous brainstorming sketches. Previously, I visualize rigid as something hard to break and showing a small deviation. However, I realize it would be more effective to show a very solid/ heavy mass. I tried showing this by having similar squares at the bottom of the page, arranged close to one another as if there is no space to move.
On the other hand, I wanted to show fluidity through the movement of gas particles. I used squares on increasing sizes to create a curved upward path as if the gas is flowing upwards.
Using a different word pair, create one composition for each word in black and white. Both compositions should be printed on one page.
I wanted to iterate on the idea of ‘order’ and ‘chaos’. For the order composition, I liked my first brainstorm of an increasing size of squares and the third brainstorm where the squares seem to move closer to the user. I then decided to integrate these two ideas to create the composition above.
For the chaos composition, I was inspired by one of the ideas for ‘clumsy’ where it looks like the blocks are toppling over as something hits it. In order to pair the two compositions together, I tried using the same elements and changing the positioning and orientation of the squares to achieve an erratic composition.
Create one composition that illustrates a reversible figure/ground relationship (50% black, 50% white).
process work
since this was something that was vastly different from using squares to visualize words, I wanted to start from square one of brainstorming possible ideas.
As I was exploring how to create a figure ground composition, I realize I was constantly making very symmetric compositions, making sure that the relationship was truly 50/50. However, my compositions ended up very boring and not being able to tell a story. This is why I wanted to create a composition that is not symmetric but still balanced.
composition after brainstorming:
Iteration 2
Using a word pair of your choice, create one composition for each word using black and one other color. The background color should be white. Squares may be different sizes. Both compositions should be printed on one page.
I felt that using the color grey in my previous iteration was mainly motivated by steel being grey and smoke being grey. However, I wanted to explore using the color blue, which is to water — a connection I wanted to make for the fluid composition. I chose a blue that had a slight tinge of grey so that the ‘rigid’ composition will still have a feeling of being permanent and not affected by external forces. I also inverted the color blocks of the ‘rigid’ composition to show more black.
Using a different word pair, create one composition for each word in black and white. Both compositions should be printed on one page.
In order to demonstrate a sense of ‘order’ by both a sequence of events as well as order in terms of leadership, I wanted to make the flow clearer by overlapping the squares. Similarly for the ‘chaos’ composition, I added more subtle movements to depict the movements of the blocks.
Create one composition that illustrates a reversible figure/ground relationship (50% black, 50% white)
I figured that my first iteration of a figure ground composition was very plain and wanted to add some slight texture to it. I explored giving is random strokes as texture but that seemed very disorderly and went against my minimal composition. I then explore using parallel lines — both horizontal and vertical and really liked this horizontal composition.
Final Iteration
Using a word pair of your choice, create one composition for each word using black and one other color. The background color should be white. Squares may be different sizes. Both compositions should be printed on one page.
I decided to change the color of my composition slightly to be more obvious that it is a mix between blue and grey.
Using a different word pair, create one composition for each word in black and white. Both compositions should be printed on one page.
process
My chaotic composition was not telling the story that I want — where orderly blocks face some external force and crumble into chaos. In order to improve it, I decided to show the blocks moving from its original orderly configuration to the chaotic formation. However, I realize that with the overlaps, it looks like a bird’s eye view of the square, which is not what I want to achieve since it would not complement the orderly composition.
This is why I decided to change my chaotic composition to mirror that of the orderly composition. However, there are more disorder in the chaotic composition. I think this works before it also creates a complete square at the middle of the page.
Create one composition that illustrates a reversible figure/ground relationship (50% black, 50% white)
process
I wanted to explore how else to get texture in my figure ground composition. I decided to change the distance between each line to make it look more like a rectangle. However, it made the lines stand out a lot. Without reverting back to the further apart lines, I wanted to explore how else to make the lines less harsh. This encouraged me to look into making the lines thinner, which also made me want to explore how a gradient of line weights would look.
In the end, I decided this composition works best, with the lines further apart and having the line stroke gradient go from thick to thin.
Final Project
