Project 2 — Form and Composition
Kruti Koppolu
Project Background
Project 2 revolved around utilizing the relationships between objects and space to create meaning and evoke thought and emotion. The basic principle to keep in mind was that objects in space can create meaning through their placement in relation to other objects in space and the space itself. Ultimately the pieces were meant to exemplify the Gestalt principle — whole compositions will be more interesting than their individual parts.
Using black squares, Gestalt principles and basic visual vocabulary, we were tasked to create compositions that illustrate the following words — order, tension, congestion, playfulness and comfort — on a 4x4 blank canvas.
Overview of Design Process
The design process took place over a 12 day time period, from September 1st to September 13th. Beginning with initial thumbnail sketches of our compositions, and evolving to full scale pieces for the final critique, it involved a lot of innovative thinking, sketching and composing.
Initially, I approached the assignment by thinking about the squares mostly as individual pieces. My thoughts revolved around how to place squares together within a larger square, but not as much on what it would contribute to the overall composition or how it would come together as one piece to convey one word. However as time went on, I started to focus more on the spacial relationships between the squares such as negative and positive space, foreground and background relativity and also on the scale of the squares, causing my designs to evolve much more. I began to think about the connotations of the words, what they meant to me and how I would perceive that given the characteristics of the squares I had to work with.
Detailed descriptions of my thought and design process for each word can be found below.
Order
My initial thoughts with order had to do with straight lines, grids and an overall cleanness to the piece. In my mind, I didn’t want to put too many squares in the piece or add squares of a larger size because that seemed to overwhelm the composition and change the word that it displayed. As a result, my first iteration of thumbnail sketches (seen on the left) used a limited amount of squares of smaller scope.
As I began to play around with the sketches more, my thought process related to the word evolved. I started to think more about spatial relationships, and the use of black and white space together to depict a word. Mainly I stopped thinking in terms of individual tiny squares and started viewing the composition more as a whole.
Tension
When it came to tension, I focused a lot on the concept of balance for my first iteration of thumbnail sketches. Balancing an object creates tension not only at specific points of the object, but also throughout the object itself. As points of tension, I tried to focus my sketches on the corners as can be seen especially in the bottom right thumbnail. By changing the direction and alignment of the squares and focusing the placement on the corners, I really tried to bring out tension from the sketches.
The top left sketch is actually one of my favorites for this word because I think it does a really great job in illustrating the word while only using one element. That single element adds to the whole composition by creating a spatial relationship between the black and white and gives the feeling that the white space looms over the black space, thereby creating tension.
As I developed my sketches, I tried to focus more on the composition as a whole while also keeping in mind the concept of points of tension. What I like about the left sketch is that it focus on the corners by having all the pieces point toward each other without actually having any contact. Additionally the jaggedness of the pieces along with the more black space than white space seem to add to bringing out the word more. On the other hand, in the right sketch, I like the usage of combining big and little squares to create a very definitive point of tension.
Congestion
The way I initially thought about congestion was pretty straightforward — fill up the white canvas with as many squares of varying size as possible. I wasn’t very happy with my first iterations because they seemed very flat and one dimensional to me. Some of them seemed to convey congestion in the literal sense but I wasn’t feeling very challenged or satisfied by them.
An interesting observation to note is that the sketch in bottom left is very similar to the top left sketch from Order. By changing the black and white squares, the composition denoted a different word to me.
After going back and sketching some more, I produced my second iteration of sketches for congestion. This time around, I focused more on the connotation of the word with respect to black and white and how the amount of space corresponds to that. I really like the right sketch because of the angles the squares are positioned in, and how the composition looks congested without looking scattered or messy.
Playfulness
For playfulness, my initial thoughts revolved around using squares with different alignments and arrangements to depict the word. To me, I associated playfulness with the concept of topsy-turvy and curves.
However, as I developed my sketches more, I started to play around with the size and direction of the squares. In my opinion, this made a huge difference from my first iteration to my second iteration of thumbnail sketches.
Playfulness was one of the words that I found a bit difficult. One of the things I struggled with was differentiating my compositions from those that spoke of congestion or tension. Additionally, even after my second iteration of sketches, I still struggled with focusing on the composition as a whole instead of focusing on the individual squares.
Comfort
Comfort was another word that I found particularly difficult. To be honest, with my first iteration of sketches, I found it really hard to think of what I could do with the squares to represent the words. While I did produce a few pieces, none of them really spoke to me of comfort. However, the one element I did like was the usage of different sized squares as can be seen in the top left sketch.
With my second iteration of sketches, I fcoused a lot on what is comforting to me. Is it excess black space or excess white space? Is it a balance between both or is it having one point to focus on in the entire composition?
An interesting overlap that I noticed while working on comfort is that I related it back to the word ‘balance’ a lot. This is an overlap because I used the same concept while sketching Order. When I thought about it more, I realized that to an extent, both have the potential to go hand in hand. A composition that is orderly can also be comforting and a composition that is comforting can also be orderly.
Final Sketches
After a lot of brainstorming and two main rounds of sketching, I finally narrowed down my sketches. In the image of my final sketches, I have two for tension because I couldn’t decide on which one and wanted to choose after representing them both digitally.
Additionally, my final sketch for order is different from my previous iterations. This is because I built on my previous iterations and drew on elements from past sketches to produce a composition that I felt contained a good use of depth and spatial relationships.
Digital Iterations
My final digital iteration for Order is one of my favorite compositions amongst the five. I’m really happy with the balance between the black and white space as well as the relationship between the foreground and background. During our in class critique, Sarika made an excellent observation about how this piece exudes depth — it seems like there is one square on top of the other. I didn’t realize that before but I completely agree that is one of the strongest traits of this composition. The final digital iteration looks a bit different from my final thumbnail sketch and this is because I felt that the piece had a stronger semblence of order when the black squares went from top left to bottom right rather than the other way around.
After playing around with the squares on Illustrator, I produced this as my final digital iteration for tension. In my opinion, changing the alignment of the big black squares and reducing the size of the smaller black squares made a significant diference to the composition. In fact, I believe it created a more powerful point of tension between the four squares than compared to the previous iterations. Furthermore, to me it gives off the impression that two big powerhouses are going head to head and the smaller beings are stuck in between without an idea of what to do next or where to go. The fact that the composition is able to illicit a story in my mind is how I knew that I had reached my goal.
My final composition for congestion did not change after I drew it during my thumbnail sketches. A large part of what made me so satisfied with this piece is the angles the squares are placed at. While it gives off a congested feel, it doesn’t look messy or chaotic. In fact, I really like the clean cut impression made by this composition. Another strength of this piece, in my opinion, is the way it uses black and white space to convey congestion.
My final digital iteration for playfulness built a lot on my previous sketches. When I was working on this composition, the two ideas I was focusing on were the idea of toys falling out of a box and the idea of a pathway to someone’s house as to me, going to play meant going to a friend’s house. After playing around a lot with the rotation of the entire canvas along with the size and direction of the individual squares, I finally settled on this composition. In my opinion, not having a definitive shape to the path taken by the squares and changing the direction the squares are placed in, really adds to bringing out the word more.
My final digital iteration for comfort focuses on the feeling of being sheltered. The idea behind this piece is that the big black square is being sheltered by the smaller squares surrounding it. By creating a place to sit on and having a support on the side (or on the back depending on how you view it), it portrays the feeling of comfort. For the black square, the space is its own nook.
The element that I brought back from my previous iterations of sketches is the usage of different sized squares because I liked the idea of using scope to display comfort. However, compared to the other compositions, I still feel like this one is relatively one dimensional and could be developed more.
Reflections
Overall, I found this assignment to be a very stimulating project. Looking back at the design process, its interesting to see how my thought process and as a result, my sketches and compositions, evolved over time. I started off by thinking of the squares as individual components but later started viewing the canvas as one element, thereby imbibing Gestalt’s principles. I felt like my sketches and ideas started off very one-dimensional but grew to be much more as I brainstormed and drew more. An aspect that I really liked about this project was using the squares and spaces in between to tell a story. That’s when my pieces took on more depth and complexity. I now feel like I’ll never be able to look at the relationship between black and white and dark and light the same way again and for that, I’m quite grateful.
