form and composition
Part 1 — Sketches:
We learned that the Gestalt Principle is the idea that human minds have the unconscious desire to group objects with patterns and to understand irregular patterns. In this project, we are to create, using only black squares, designs that represent word combinations in an abstract way. The word pairs were: rigid + fluid, clumsy + graceful, rhythmic + erratic.
We began with a sketching process of describing the aforementioned word pairs. To me, this was a very thought-provoking process that I enjoyed a lot. Although we had specific restrictions that we could follow, I felt that I was able to freely express myself. Furthermore, these restrictions also challenged me to think outside of the box and come up with solutions that were clever and still accurately represented the words.
Here are few of the sketches I made and thought process while creating these:
When I first looked at the word rigid, I thought that everything should be neat and logically organized. As I was sketching, I realized that what I feel is rigid is when it fills up the tense corners of the border. Furthermore, I felt that the squares should have close proximity because rigidness means that it is difficult for them to move around and it will stay in place.
The approach that I took when looking at the word clumsy was to think about the things that happen in real life where I define as clumsy. At first, I immediately remembered a picture book I read in kindergarten, Mr. Clumsy. Something clumsy would be like stubbing my toe on the side of my bed or spilling a cup of coffee.
In creating rhythmic, I thought about the Gestalt principle of continuation. I feel that rhythm is something that has a pattern and will allow the audience to be able to imagine what happens after the limited amount of space on the page has ended.
Gracefulness means something is pleasing in my opinion. It should not bring stress to the eye of the viewer. I looked into creating designs that have a lot of space and is soothing when looking at the image. I also remembered the idea of including the rules of thirds into my designs as that allows creates a more aesthetic image psychologically.
When I think about fluidity, I once again tried to apply the idea of continuation because I feel the fluidity of an image means that it does not end.
Erraticness was difficult to achieve. That’s because I feel like creating an erratic image means that we have to do the opposite of all of the Gestalt principles. The ultimate goal for the piece would be one that we would not be able to apply any of the principles to the piece since erraticness in its nature does not have a pattern.
With the sketches completed, I was able to move on and continue with creating the digital versions of the pieces.
Part 2 — Digital with Adobe Illustrator:
Creating illustrations digitally had its advantages and disadvantages. It was much easier to create the perfect square; however, it limited us as everything has to be pixel perfect in terms of its location, orientation, and proximity with other squares. Nonetheless, it was easy to go about with depth exploration of each piece and also exploring a range of different designs as we could simply copy and paste an artboard to create a variation of it.
As you can see, I tried various different versions of the same design in its core. A lot of changes, unfortunately could not be fully documented in picture, so I will record in writing. For example, with the tilt of the clumsy square, I had to play with various angles to find the perfect balance where the tilt was just enough for observant audiences to notice, but also not too tilted that it does not represent the word clumsy anymore.
Another advantage we could use with technology was the fact that we could see the exact (x, y) coordinates of the shapes and also create pixel perfect guidelines to help us better create visually aesthetic designs. For example, with the three shapes on the left, I was able to utilize the guidelines in AI to create a 3 by 3 grid which allowed me to place the shapes in it so that it followed the rules of thirds. Similarly with the three images on the left, I could create a diagonal line so that the shapes would fall perfectly on the diagonal of the border.
With these pieces, I was able to create various objects and easily manipulate different shapes such as rotating one, or deleting one to achieve the desired result.
The figure ground piece was very pleasurable to make. Since we had to create a reversible figure ground piece, meaning something that the human eye can easily transfer between the black and white pieces of the design, I thought about Gestalt Principle — Closure. This is because I really wanted to have a goal with what the reversible counterpart will present to the audience.
Part 3 — Final:
From the pieces, I tried combining various areas to see which ones represented the words accurately and also which ones I could combine together so that the audiences would have another realization when the images are put next to each other, and have each of the words amplify each other so that the audience will see a greater contrast. For example, for the rigid and fluid piece above, the fluid would be able to fill in the negative space of the rigid piece; however, when put separately, it can still represent itself.
With the graceful and clumsy, I tried to have the two pieces be able to complement each other as well. The graceful piece is very perpendicular with the page so that it will be able to enhance the fact that the clumsy piece was very clumsy in having a tilted square. With the change of color, it is to draw the audience’s eyes to that part of the page to notice that the angles between the two squares are not actually perpendicular.
I chose this piece as the final piece for my figure ground because it both represented the continuity of the design so that the audience can easily imagine the pattern continuing off the page beyond its points, and also the closure of the triangle in the center of the page.
In the end, I really enjoyed this project as it was one of the first design projects I have done since elementary school. I have really enjoyed the idea of given a set of rules and go out to create something that can express my values and thought with nothing but shapes and color. Learning the Gestalt principles clarified a lot of the things I see in everyday life but could not put into words and theory. And being aware of these principles will also allow me to recognize these intricate designs that designers have put hours of thought and hard work in to create.
