Project 2 — Sachi Belani
About the Project
The aim of this project was to depict five emotions and feelings using something simple, black squares. This project was definitely quite interesting because the five emotions — playfulness, comfort, tension, order, and congestion — are complex and usually require a whole picture to depict. I enjoyed this complexity to simplicity a lot throughout the whole project. For each emotion, we were required to only use black squares, that can overlap, fall off the page, and be of any size or orientation. Once we had sketched out several ideas for each emotion, we used Adobe Illustrator for the first time in the course, and also the first time I had ever used the software.
Project Process
For every emotion, I tried to think about characteristics of that emotion and how feasible it would be to depict it using these black squares. This was really difficult at first, but once I started, my thought process became more refined. Of course, this process was different for every emotion, so below I will be discussing every emotion separately and more specifically.
Playfulness
This emotion was definitely one of the easier ones for me to do. When I think of playfulness, I think of movement and creativity, since when I think of children playing, I know they go by their own made-up rules and have a lot of excitement and energy with new experiences. Therefore, I tried to go for visuals with a lot of movement, almost something that was a lot to look at but also looked cohesive in some way. In two of my five initial sketches, I tried to depict nature, perhaps a flower or the sun, because those remind me of childhood, playfulness, and creativity. One sketch is kind of random, but the randomness almost depicts a fun and creative vibe, which is exactly what I was going for. Another sketch is a chess board, which was perfect for this emotion, but that wasn’t my favorite because chess is a lot about following the rules, and that didn’t resonate with playfulness in my mind. And last, I tried to create a zig zag pattern, which is crazy and wild, all what children are about. The final design I chose was actually none of these ideas. The swirl idea was originally one of my comfort sketches, but when I was deciding on which one to finally select, I realized that instead of having a swirl of the same-sized boxes, I can add a gradient of sizes from the inside to the outside of the swirl, which adds some musicality and more “fun” to the piece, making it perfect for playfulness.
Comfort
When I think of comfort, I think of fitting in, kind of like how two people fit into each other for a hug. The idea of fitting in has a literal concept that can be relatively easy to depict using black squares, so that’s what I went for. The one thing I struggled with here was that though fitting in is comforting to me, I can also see how that can easily turn into congestion, which is definitely not something I wanted to portray. In my first two sketches, that’s kind of what happened. I wanted to depict closeness in these, and they looked a little crammed, which is why the next two sketches have a little more space and freedom, per se. However, I felt that the third of the five sketches was a little too simple and didn’t scream comfort to me, and the fourth of the five sketches was too similar to the pattern of a chess or checkers board. The last sketch was of the swirl, which I mentioned above. Initially, a nice swirl of the same-sized squares was meant to be comforting to me, but as I mentioned before, that reminded me more of playfulness. I ended up choosing the second sketch because it reminded me most of a hug but also somehow reminded me of my family the most. I am close to my family and they have embraced me for who I am, which I think resonated a lot with this sketch.
Tension
This emotion was definitely an interesting one for me, since I like perfect angles and feel uncomfortable when things don’t line up. For tension, I was going along the lines of physical tension instead of emotional tension. To me, physical tension is either when something is about to fall, or that something is held together because of something small. I tried to depict one of those two things in my sketches. The first one is almost like a motion snapshot of a square falling off a larger one. This seemed a little too cliché for me so I didn’t end up selecting that one. The second one was the little square being held up by two massive squares. In this, one can see that any movement of either massive square can cause the small square to fall, but also for the other massive square to potentially lose its balance. The third sketch is of a small square supporting a huge square, which I thought was interesting but not as tense as I would have liked it to be. In retrospect, a good idea would have been to put both on a slant, which is what a fellow student in the course had illustrated. The fourth sketch is two squares holding up a ceiling of sorts. The fifth sketch was also a play on the falling and also related to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I ended up choosing the fourth design and modifying it. As I mentioned, I love perfect angles, which is why the sketch is using right angles and symmetry. However, tension is the exact opposite of that, which is why my final design is a modification of the initial sketch, and now has non-right angles and a little more tension.
Order
One would think that order would be the easiest to depict, but I had difficulty with this one. I was struggling between making something look orderly but then also trying to make it not look simple, because both words have very different meanings to me. The first sketch was of black squares that were falling off the canvas to make this small white box. However, this didn’t scream order to me, since personally, order is almost like individual things being a part of a whole thing. The second sketch is small squares forming an X, which I thought was very orderly. The third sketch is squares marking the corners of a larger square, which was interesting, but not necessarily as orderly as I had hoped. The fourth sketch was probably the worst in my eyes, but it was actually supposed to depict bricks of increasing size from top to bottom. Perhaps if I had reduced the space between the squares, the sketch would have been more effective. Nonetheless, when I was transferring some sketches to Adobe Illustrator, I tried to do another play on bricks, but ended up choosing a different sketch anyway. The last one is kind of like a cake, but that didn’t scream order to me either. At the end, I ended up choosing the X because I liked the idea of small things building up to become a larger thing in an orderly fashion.
Congestion
This was definitely the most fun for me to do, which was interesting because I’m actually slightly claustrophobic. Perhaps it had to do with tapping into my personal connections to this emotion. For four of the five sketches, I used very minimal white space and made squares uncomfortably tight and crammed. The second sketch is a box constrained by a border of boxes, making it impossible for the small square to move at all. The third sketch is a big square pushing all the small squares to the side, and though this is congested, I didn’t wan the congestion to be too orderly. The fourth sketch was a very large square constrained by the edges of the canvas, which shows congestion and lack of movement. The fifth sketch is of two squares edge-to-edge without room for movement. Going back to the first design, this one actually used a lot of white space in comparison to the other four. I liked the idea of having a few small boxes pushed off to the side, but perhaps this didn’t scream congestion because there was almost too much room for movement. When I was transferring these sketches to Adobe Illustrator, I frankly wasn’t satisfied with any of them, so I decided to play on the concept of the first sketch to create some more. The first modification of the first sketch was adding a slanted black square that basically forced the smaller squares to congregate into the corner. The second modification of the first sketch was actually to create a space in which the squares can congregate, kind of like an hourglass or salt-shaker. I really liked the last one, and I decided to choose that one to depict congestion.
Overall
Initially, I was quite intimidated by the parameters of this project, as I didn’t know how I could possibly depict such complex emotions using the simplicity of the black squares, but also because I knew absolutely nothing about using Adobe Illustrator. However, I really like challenges and really embraced this one. I thoroughly enjoyed this project and thought it pushed my boundaries and creativity really well.
