Project Two: Form & Composition
Sketching Thumbnails
When I initially started sketching my compositions, I was not sure how I wanted to convey the words through my designs. I asked myself questions like, “What does order look like?” and, “How does tension make me feel?” Because of this, my first sketches for each word tended to be very literal and in turn, boring and expected.
Example Literally Interpreted Sketches
- Order 1: a chess board. Chess boards are a familiar and well ordered design with exactly 64 squares alternating black and white.
- Tension 1: squares approaching each other diagonally from opposing corners and geometrically decreasing in size. Visually, this looked just like an objects being stretched out with a very obvious point of tension.
- Congestion 1: squares trying to fall into the same crevice but getting stuck.
- Playfulness 1: squares shaped like a snowman standing in a grass field on a sunny day. Something that a child would draw and very literally “playful.”
- Comfort 2: a single small square resting under a square house.
After my initial attempts, I felt that I developed a better feel for what each concept meant and proceeded with more abstract sketches. I also reread the handout and played with ideas such as scale, rotation, number of squares, and overlapping shapes. I also tried to create designs that conveyed the feeling of the word to the viewer rather than simply creating a design the encapsulated the idea.
Example Abstract Sketches
- Order 3: a circular array of squares rotated around the center of the canvas. I tried to convey order through the mathematically planned locations of the squares as well as through the implied circle shape.
- Congestion 4: a collection of many squares packed closely together with varying scale to give the viewer a feeling of discomfort and tightness.
- Playfulness 2: a play on my more literal composition, I abstracted the shapes to the point where they can no longer be recognized as real world concepts and played more with the scale and negative space.
Here are the resulting sketches from this process. For the words that I felt I understood how to embed into a composition, I did the minimum number of sketches. For words such as “Congestion” and “Playfulness” that I had more difficulty with, I did a few extra sketches to experiment with some ideas more until I felt that I understood represent them through communication design.
Digital Iterations
Before receiving feedback on my sketches, I moved some of my favorite sketches to Adobe Illustrator. When moving from a physical format to a digital format, I realized that some of my compositions did not transfer as well as I hoped while others transferred better than I expected. For example, the chessboard design I composed for order became more difficult to look at a on digital medium. The repetitive patterns made it difficult for my eyes to find a comfortable place to rest. Another example is the congestion composition with all the tightly packed squares. Looking at it on a digital format where all the squares are exact squares and where it was easier to create really small squares worked very successfully to convey congestion in my opinion.
The feedback I received from the TA was very helpful. My biggest issue was that I focused too much on literal interpretations. At this point, I was still happy with my tension 1 and comfort 1 compositions. However, after speaking to the TA, I realized that I was focused on very few Gestalt principles. She also pointed out that I should try to think about negative space more.
After this, I continued to create new designs and take inspiration from my earlier sketches. I felt it was easier to iterate and compose on Adobe Illustrator than it was to with pen and paper, so I did not create any more sketches.
The compositions that saw the biggest change were comfort and tension. For tension, I focused on points of tension in my composition — places that would instantly draw the viewers eyes and create a feeling of tense discomfort. For comfort, I focused on using large amounts of positive space outline by a fixed amount of negative space.
Upon reflecting on my works, I realized that many of the words for this assignment were related. In my opinion, order has an inherently comfortable aspect to it, while tension and congestions were inherently uncomfortable words and feelings.
Final Compositions
With feedback from the TA, I was able to quickly iterate on my designs and decide on the following final designs:
