Project 2: Form and Composition

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2019
Individual Project

About the Project

This project is an exploration of objects in space and how they portray the meaning through their composition. Gestalt principles are used throughout this project to portray the basic vocabulary that is selected to describe these pieces. There are 5 compositions in total and each one is described by one word: Comfort, Playfulness, Congestion, Tension and Order. Squares are used as the objects in space to represent these words.

Project Process

Initially 5 thumbnail sketches were drawn for each of the words. One or two compositions were then chosen to be further explored using Illustrator before the final compositions were chosen.

Comfort

I chose the composition on the left as the final piece for comfort because out of of all the illustrations that I drew I felt the most comfortable looking at this one. To me comfort represents simplicity and ease which is what I see when I look at this composition.

I chose the top left image out of these 5 thumbnail sketches on the left and decided to play around with the size of the square and the angle that it is placed at. These compositions are created in Illustrator and are are shown below. The final size and angle of the square was chosen based on the comforting feeling that it created when I looked at it.

Playfulness

The image on the left represents little kids that are playing with each other. These squares are pushing one another gently without any one of the toppling over, just like how little kids would push each other playfully.

I played around with the proximity and the number of these “dancing squares” to see which one would represent the word playfulness the best.

Congestion

When I think of congestion, I think of cities and dense skyscrapers .The image on the left reminds me of different cities coming together, creating a very congested and claustrophobic feeling.

For the thumbnail sketches I played around with different types of congestion. For example, many things falling together and crashing together also creates that feeling of congestion. However, I decided on my final thumbnail because I was able to look at the image and feel congested and uncomfortable.

Tension

The image on the left represents physiological tension. The feeling of being so close to someone and yet you are not touching them. The left square in the composition is pushing the right square towards the edge with the feeling of tension in between them.

When I was drawing my thumbnail sketches, I thought a lot about whether to represent physical tension or psychological tension. And I ended up choosing psychological tension as I think that is a more interesting approach.

Order

I wanted to create a composition that just by looking at it, it gave the feeling of something very organized and structured because that is what the word order means to me. I chose this composition because the rectangles were very systematic and orderly.

As one can see in the Illustrator images below, I played around with the gap in between the rectangles and also the angle of the middle line and I decided on keeping the middle line in the middle as that represented order to me the most.