Communication Design Fundamentals: Assignment 2
David Bick
Introduction
This project is to explore Gestalt ideas in the context of Communication Design, by trying to represent complex abstract concepts (in the form of word pairs) with an extremely simple form — a square. The challenge is to display creativity in an extremely constrained environment, and the restrictions force you to develop as a designer to express your ideas.
Part 1: Sketching Thumbnails
The word pair of Rigid and Fluid was the first that I attempted, and thus the beginning of a feeling-out process in this project. The designs in this pair were the most basic while I tried to adjust my mindset.
Rigid tended to be involve square designs and straight lines, while fluid had more curves and sense of motion. Water, and a sense of falling, motion, or curving was an inspiration for fluid. Another inspiration for both words was the diagrams in chemistry textbooks I saw in high school, that showed molecules composed in a solid or fluid state — in a solid the molecules are bunched together very tightly, but in a fluid/liquid the molecules can flow around each other.
For my Graceful sketches I tried to avoid the obvious curving patterns that would be expected, as I had done that for Fluid. I tried instead to make symmetric patterns, or patterns that had motion and elegance without necessarily curving.
I tried to have each Clumsy drawing be a deconstructed version of the Graceful drawing to its left, but I realized that they all became too similar, so I made five more sketches trying to portray Clumsy as its own word, instead of a deconstructed Graceful drawing. These five sketches were probably my favorite sketches that I did, and I felt like I was getting into the correct mindset better.
For the Rhythmic sketches, I tried to have some type of pattern in the scale or design of the squares. The first sketch, which was the first idea I had for rhythmic, was my favorite, and drew inspiration from a wavelength pattern.
The erratic sketches tried to do the opposite of the Rhythmic patterns, with disruptions in the pattern or scale of the squares.
I felt the figure/ground sketches were the most challenging, and I was not very satisfied with the sketches I came up with, but I thought it would be easier to see on Illustrator than with my own drawings.
Part 2: Digital Iterations
These were my favorite sketches of Clumsy that I translated into Illustrator for digital iterating. I also immediately knew I would choose this word to have color, because I felt that it could really help to emphasize some of the squares as different than the others.
In the first design, I wanted to make the square breaking the pattern be as different as possible, so the spacing, color, and orientation are all breaking the pattern.
In the second design I tried to do the opposite, with the most “normal” square on top of the big block being the odd one out in color. I was trying to play off expectations, so even the most static square is different because of the color.
I liked this color for Clumsy because it is such a light yellow it can be hard to see, which can be annoying on the eyes. I felt this added to the effect of something being out of place.
My favorite sketches of Graceful were ones that displayed symmetry, and I wanted to challenge expectations of curves in a graceful pattern by having more linear patterns that were still graceful. The two designs were exploring the opposites of motion and stillness.
The left design keeps your eyes fixed exactly in the middle, and I find the symmetry and weight of the squares to be very graceful. I wanted the other design to contrast the static lack of motion in the first, as it draws the eyes across the length of the diagonal, showing a sense of motion that I find graceful.
I enjoyed these sketches for Rhythmic, because it shows a pattern in two different dimensions — scale and design. The left has a pattern that shows rhythm, and is like a wave form, which is the foundational component of sound, and thus rhythm. The right design plays on scale, and one of the key components in the rhythmic designs to me was balance, which is present in both of these designs.
The erratic designs broke the patterns that were displayed in the rhythmic drawings. I knew I wanted to iterate a little more of these designs, because I thought they displayed the concept of erratic well, but I felt like they could be improved.
I again found the figure ground to be the most challenging, so I knew I would have more iterations, but I tried to translate my favorite sketches.
Part 3 Depth of Iteration
At this point, I was happy with some of the designs, and left those to be the final, so I could focus more on the ones that I wanted to improve more. I liked my clumsy and graceful designs, so I added color to the graceful design and picked my favorite of the two.
I wanted to improve on my erratic design, but I felt that it was close, so I developed it into this figure. I added a larger grid around the center square, so that there was more of a clear pattern to disrupt in the figure, and I tried to have some squares that were very much out of the pattern, and some that were only very slightly. Overall, I wanted it to be slightly irritating to look at, with a feeling of things being out of place.
I did some of the most iterating on my rhythmic concept, because I really liked the wave form design, but I felt something was missing. I developed these designs, playing around with orientation, scale, rotation, and more. I checked with Robert about some of these iterations, and he liked the horizontal form with a larger difference in scale, so I eventually chose the top left and tried to exaggerate the difference in scale more than I had previously.
Figure/ground, as one of the hardest, took the most iterations. I tried out a number of things and iterated depth-wise on those. I wanted to explore creating a pattern of squares, and then disrupt one of the squares by replacing it with a negative version of the square created by a border of smaller squares, as in the second row. The first row is creating a more symmetric relationship, with the black squares creating negative images similar to a cross, in the second example, and a hashtag in the third example.
Lastly, I wanted to explore the designs that used more black than white in the image, so I developed the bottom four examples. I liked the bottom left a lot as a design, as it reminded me of a square version of the yin-yang sign. I consulted Robert during this process, and he told me he liked the top row the most, so I chose the top right, as I could see the black squares creating a form, and easily see the hashtag in the negative space.
Final Designs
These were the final results of the iterating process.
Reflection
This was one of the first projects I ever did to develop visual pieces over time. My experience with drawing usually involved drawing something only once before moving onto the next idea, unless I was practicing drawing shapes for fundamentals work. Thus it was a challenge to keep iterating on designs, because I had been in the mindset that once I finished at first, I was done with a drawing. This was a good experience to develop myself and develop the skill to keep refining things.
After all the refining of my designs, I was pretty happy with my end result. Then seeing all the designs that people came up with in the final review humbled me a little bit, as I was very much impressed with what people were able to do with nothing but squares to represent these words. I tried to take it positively, and use it as an indicator that I can develop a lot and eventually reach levels closer to what I saw by others.
If I was to do this project again, I would try to allow myself more freedom immediately, as that took a little while to get in my head. At the end, I was very willing to make many designs and not worry about what I thought of each one, and not attach too much to any single one. I would try to do this earlier in the process if possible, as it frees you up from putting too much pressure on yourself to make each design the best one you’ve ever made.
This was a learning experience, and I am happy to have gone through this project. Thanks!
