Project 2: Form and Composition
Discussion On Process:
To start this assignment, I began by sketching out ideas for each of the 5 words: order, comfort, tension, playfulness, and congestion. I came up with the following 25 sketches.
Translating these sketches to Illustrator allowed me to make adjustments for each composition. I was able to play around with exact size, spacing, and angle of each individual square and experiment and make decisions about what form made a stronger statement about each word.
Order:
Originally, I had chosen my fifth sketch to represent order. I believe the word was being conveyed through stacking the squares in order of descending size. However, after translating the sketch from paper to illustrator, I realized that order could be conveyed in an even simpler and cleaner way. My final composition for order has identically sized squares evenly spaced out across the horizontal center of the page. To me, this composition represents order through the tidiness and uniformity of the squares.
Congestion:
I knew right after my sketches which one I would pick as a representation of congestion. I liked the way my last sketch conveyed an attempt to move through the page, but then getting stuck in a crowd. The main challenge of this composition was to figure out a shape and layout of each square on Illustrator that drew attention to the center of the page- the section that actually portrayed the word. During the critique, I did receive a comment that this composition felt playful rather than congested because of the large amount of whitespace. However, I believe the white space and the single “lane” of squares give the congested bubble some context and juxtapose the congestion happening in the composition.
Playfulness:
It was difficult for me to come up with sketches for this word. Everything that I came up with seemed too orderly, too static. After speaking with Mackenzie, she recommended that I play with scale of squares rather than just placement and angle. So, I went back to sketching to come up with my final composition- a swirl of squares. I like the way your eyes follow the swirl into the page. I think the smooth angle of the squares really does portray playfulness. In addition, I’m proud that I was able to accomplish an almost 3-dimensional looking composition.
Comfort:
This word was perhaps the most challenging to come up with sketches for. My thinking was very one-tracked- I was trying to model things that gave me comfort. This is why several of my sketches look like furniture. However, I landed on the second sketch to translate to Illustrator. It was comforting to me that each little piece had a place and fit perfectly in its spot. I ended up rotating the composition clockwise so that the smaller squares were next to the larger square instead of on top of it. Having them side by side felt like the larger square was consoling the smaller squares rather than just boosting them up. I think that overall, I did accomplish the representation of comfort through this composition. In the critique, this idea was supported by a few comments that stated the closeness of the squares and the fact that they all fit together was very comforting.
Tension:
When I first began sketching for tension, I thought of things off-balance, about to tip over or fall down. Four of my five sketches show this idea, and the composition shown to the left was going to be my choice for the final composition. However, when I looked at it, I knew what word it was trying to portray but I didn’t actually feel that word. The squares spacing are too orderly. The composition was comfortable, not tense.
So, I decided to model tension through the one awkward square in the bottom left corner. Up until the final critique, I didn’t know which composition to tension to choose to show to the class and submit as my final project- I had actually printed out both. However, just looking at the lonely square made me feel tense. I kept thinking “what is it doing there?”, “I want to move it.”
The comments I received on this composition were much more positive than I had expected. I wasn’t sure that the one square would really convey an entire idea, but it seemed to have come across clearly. One comment read “I like this! It expresses tension in a very simple way!
Closing Thoughts
I really enjoyed working on this project. I learned how complex messages and ideas can be clearly communicated through simple design tools. Seeing everybody’s compositions in the final critique really demonstrated how for each word, common themes and ideas were present. This project will always be a reminder of using design concepts to convey any given feeling, idea, or message.
