Project 2 Documentation
The above images describe comfort, tension, congestion, order, and playfulness by only using black squares. Making use of black and white contrast, white space, and positioning, the above images attempt to create an emotional pairing with the words they describe.
Comfort
The above images attempt to illustrate comfort. To me, comfort meant symmetry and minimalism. In my early sketches, I tried to experiment with symmetric patterns and minimalist large squares.The symmetric patterns tended to make use of smaller squares, which I found added cognitive load and severly contrasted my idea of minimalism. Focusing on an image that encapsulated both ideas, I decided to iterate on my sketch of the single black square. My first digital iteration makes more use of color contrast. This was done to draw the viewer in. The majority of the piece is dark, giving the viewer less to look at, yet allowing them to focus more on the center of the image. The white space does a good job of bringing the viewers attention to the black square in the center. From this point, it is the viewers choice: is the center image a thick white outline of a square or a black square on a white square. I find that toying with the foreground and background makes an image more interesting, and I am proud of how this image is as simple and comforting as it is interesting. The final digital iteration focuses on precision, and perfecting the measurements of the first digital iteration.
Congestion
When it came to congestion, I knew I wanted to use more black space and a combination of large and small squares. I thought that the extreme scaling of the squares would make the smaller squares seem more “trapped.” The larger squares would take up more canvas space, giving the smaller squares less room to breath, allowing for the feeling of congestion.
The first digital iteration was inspired by sketch 5 as well as an hourglass. The speed of an hourglasses is dependent on congestion; a large volume of sand must congest itself to fit through a small hole and the delay that is caused measures time. In the digital iteration, the white squares represent parts of the hour glass, and the small black squares represent sand. The small black squares are trying to squeeze into the small opening, and they are stuck. Their congestion is the main message of this image, and I believe that it comes across to the viewer.
In the final iteration, the squares are placed so that they do not overlap with each other. I felt that the angles in the image would be better displayed if only the edges of each square touch the edges of the other squares. These angles define and cut into the white squares in between the congested squares. I find that this well-defined white space adds to the overall image and is a large theme in this image.
Order
When sketching for order, I approached it very literally at first. The sketches feature order in placment and size order, order through minimalism. I chose to iterate on the fifth sketch, but it felt like white space was overpowering the image. I wanted to create a good balance between white and dark space as a way to further demonstrate balance/order, and the initial image required more dark space. I also wanted to spread the image to cover more of the canvas. These ideas lead me to playing with diagonals and adding smaller squares as a way to balance the image. The smaller squares are in order diagonally, and I felt like that added more to the image’s meaning.
In the final iteration, I perfected placements, and also made all the squares proportional to each other. These proportions further attest to order and hone the image.
Tension
My initial sketches described tension in a very different way than the digital iterations. The digital iterations are grounded in optical illusion, and this came about from iterating on sketch 2. There are three parts to the final piece that cause tension, the first of which is the squares placed onto the white spaces. We know they are squares, but we see circles. This discrepency between reality and perception caused the viewer tension. The squares are also different sizes and some of the squares bleed off the edges. This was done so that the eye struggles. The squares that bleed off sometimes look like they are lifted higher than the corner squares.
This image is more difficult to digest than the others, and it is the one I am most proud of. My eyes struggle when I look at it, and it’s intentionally mismatched features bother me. When I see this image, I feel the tension it is trying to describe.
Playfulness
I knew I wanted to incorperate movement and angles into my sketches for playfulness and that is something that I struggled with in my sketches. This is evidenced by the sketches that have been crossed off. I iterated on the sketch to the top right because it had a lot of white space to contrast my other images. It was simple, light, and had played with motion. In my iterations, especially when trying to attain precision, I struggled with how to arrange the squares. I wasn’t sure how to anchor them. I tried anchoring to a straight line by the center of the square. Then I tried to anchor them to a straight line by the bottom right of the square, the point of rotation. The final iteration has all the squares 15º apart, and they are anchored on a sine function. I thought that this curvature would further develop playfulness, and I am happy with how this piece turned out.
