CDF Project 2: Form and Composition
In the project I tried to manipulate squares to convey the following five concepts: Order, Tension, Congestion, Playfulness, comfort. In the process I explored how to give the graph different meanings by adjusting the size of objects, the composition of the graph and the distribution of white space.
Thumbnail sketches:
To start with the project I first thought about what these five words mean to me. Then I drew 25 thumbnail sketches, five for each word.
Order:
My understanding for order is the arrangement of thing in relation to each other following a particular sequence, pattern or method. I started by putting the squares together according to a certain pattern, such as the size of the square, the number of the square or the angle the square was twisted. I also want to keep the composition simple and clean to emphasize the idea of order. Following are my sketches for order and my personal favorite if the one in the middle of the second picture. In this graph I put six squares in two rows. The squares have three different sizes, small, medium and large. On the first row it goes by small, medium, large and on the second row it goes by reverse order. I like it because it is very obvious that the arrangement of squares follows a particular order and if you look at the whole composition the pattern is attractive. For the graph in the last picture I was not sured that it is more like order of playfulness.
Tension:
To convey the idea of tension I try to create the composition that can make the viewer feel nervous and uncomfortable. For the four graphs in the first picture I tried to achieve the uneasiness by piling the squares together in a way that violates the physics rule. I created series of unstable structures that seems they are going collapse in any minute. In the second picture I tried to create the feel of uncomfortable by using the contrast between comfortable setting and uncomfortable setting. In the third picture I focused more on the overall visualization effect. I used the strong contrast between black and white to create the effect similar to that of a perplexing maze.
Congestion:
When I think about congestion I think about the idea of crowing, gridlock and traffic jam. For all my sketches I filled the background board with black square but then I tried to figure out a way to convey the idea of congestion with as many white space in the board as possible. I sketched the graph in the first picture on the right of the first row. In this graph I left a white square in the middle and according to the closure rule we will have the tendency to add a square to fill the empty space and therefore produce a sense of congestion.
Playfulness:
For playfulness I tried to create the atmosphere of fun and animated. I first created the sketch in the picture based on the idea of Tetris. Then in the second picture I tried to manipulate the arrangement and space of squares to create some fun patterns such as snowflakes. My personal favorite for playfulness is the last picture. I imitated the idea of Piet Mondrian’s artwork and used small squares to compose lines, rectangles to fill up the whole space.
Comfort:
I found comfort to be the hardest concept to present. Since I always think it is order that create the sense of comfort it is really hard for me to differentiate these two concepts. Still I tried to make the graphs concise. I also tried to create circles using squares because I always feel comforting looking at round objects.
Digital Iterations (First Version):
This is an overview for my first version of digital iteration. From top to bottom are the concepts of order, tension, congestion, playfulness and comfort. When converting the sketches to digital version many have the effect that I have not imagined. I also got inspired by just dragging squares around and created several new graphs.
Order:
For order I focused on the following two series. The first series is graph 1 and graph 4(I didn’t put them together because this way it is visually clearer). In the first series I put 6 squares with different sizes and grouped them by three and make them to align following the order of size. Compared to the sketch I also centered them to make the composition more neat. For graph 4 I left some space between the first row of squares and the second row so that you can see the outline of a square. For the second series I used tiny squares and make them overlap with each other to create lines. I used different sizes of squares to create lines with different width. I made graph 2 first and in this graph I try to create three groups of lines following the order of the width of lines. However, with the irregular distribution of white space this doesn’t look very orderly. Then I made graph 3 where I put the lines more randomly and this turned out to be better. First all the squares are lined up which can form a sense of order. More importantly I used different width of lines to compose the graph try to guide the viewer. For example, when looking at the graph one would first focus on the lines with largest width and after that the one with second largest widths, etc. Therefore though on the first glance the graph doesn’t seem to follow any particular order, you can actually feel the concept of order when staring at it.
Tension:
For tension, initially I want to create the sense of nervous by piling squares together to form structures that violate physics rules. However, when I converted the sketches to the digital version the whole graphs seems to be a little boring and are lack of visual impact. Therefore I focused on creating a visual impact that would make people nervous. I started by trying to create angular objects using squares. I was hoping that angular objects could make people feel uncomfortable in contrast to round objects. For the second graph if you focus on the black part, it looks like a barren mountain and if you focus on the white part it looks like broken glass. Personally both of the two ideas make me uncomfortable. My favorite is the third graph. I first filled the whole board with small squares with equal spacing among them, then I twisted them by a small angle. As a result you can see the dizzy black and white grid with wield waves in it.
Congestion:
For congestion I have two ideas. The first one is to express the idea by creating contrast between extremely congestion area and sparse area. The second on is to create a narrow tunnel and using one square to block the entrance. I focused on the second idea. I used two giant squares to create a tunnel and I placed a square stuck at the entrance in a weird angle. In the back of the stuck square are a bunch of tiny squares which should go through the tunnel easily if the entrance is not blocked. I tried to present the sense of congestion by letting the viewer imagine how free the tunnel would be it the specific square is not stuck there.
Playfulness:
To present playfulness using squares the first thing that came to my mind is Tetris. However because Tetris might be a common idea when coming to this case, I tried to make it less obvious. I created graph 1 which contains a bottom part and the top part which look very similar but they are actually matched. If you push the top part down, it will connect perfectly with the bottom part and form a rectangle. The second graph was inspired by Mondrian’s artwork. I used tiny squares to compose lines and rectangles. Then I placed them randomly across the canvas without any order. You would never know where the line is going to stop and when looking at the graph each person will have different orders and different focus on the objects. The randomness and open of interpretation creates the sense of playfulness.
Comfort:
When I did my sketch I want to use squares to compose a round object to create the sense of comfort. However, it turns out to be extremely hard to do that in illustrator and the resulting effect is not that satisfactory. Therefore I tried to create a simple logo using squares, which is symmetrical in any direction(graph 2). In graph 1 I tried to create the sketch of a city. In this graph the relationship between figure and ground is reversible. The idea of the sketch of city under the night sky makes my real comforting.
Feedback from Critique:
Following are some feedback I got from my classmates and some of them even given the graph new meaning that I haven’t though of originally.
Digital Iterations (Final Version):
