Project Two: Form and Composition
Part I: Sketching Thumbnails
When I was sketching, these are some of the things I drew inspiration from:
Rigid: sharp angles, stiffness
Fluid: curves, ripples in water, water droplets, waves, ocean tide
Active: lines behind runners in cartoons, physics diagrams, arms and legs when running (active position)
Passive: stationary objects, hiding, relaxed, following convention, depending on another
Clumsy: chaos, unbalanced
Graceful: gymnast/dancer fingers, balance, extended limbs, butterfly
In sketching, I found that it was easiest to do passive, as I thought it was the simplest word/idea. I liked how minimalistic I felt my sketches could be, really utilizing the whitespace to convey passiveness.
In contrast, I found it very difficult to find inspiration for active, rigid, and clumsy. For active, I felt really stuck on how to convey motion through a still picture, and through such rigid objects. However, for rigid, I also found difficulty in the fact that the squares were rigid, but alone did not convey rigidity. I couldn’t find a good way to express the stiffness and sharpness I associate with rigidity. In addition, it was hard for me to find breadth in my sketches for clumsy — at a certain point, I felt that chaos is just chaos and mess is just mess and didn’t know how to tweak the chaos and mess to create something distinct and communicate a more specific idea. It was also hard for me to convey clumsy in a minimalistic way.
Just in general, I found it more difficult to convey rigid, active, and clumsy than fluid, passive, and graceful. I thought this was really interesting because when I initially saw the word pairs, I had more clear and distinct definitions of rigid, active, and clumsy in my head. I knew what images came to mind and I knew what they meant. So, it really took me by surprise when these were the 3 to stump me. Now that I reflect on it, I think that it actually makes a lot of sense — the ambiguity in fluid, passive, and graceful left a lot of room for creativity and exploration. The more set definitions of rigid, active, and clumsy meant there was something more specific I had to convey, and as a result, it was more noticeable when my composition didn’t clearly communicate the word.
On another note, I also found it interesting that I was very hesitant to overlap squares in my sketches, as I was afraid of my squares being unrecognizable. However, I also just liked focusing on and utilizing the whitespace.
In addition, for a few of the sketches, I tried to explore the idea of drawing lines first, and then creating squares from the lines. I think this was particularly useful for graceful and fluid, to ensure that the soft curves I wanted were clearly visible.
I also really made a point to try to make graceful differ from fluid. I found that the main difference between the two for me was that fluid depended a lot on curved lines, with a sense of controlled chaos (inspired by the ocean). In contrast, I felt that my inspiration for graceful stemmed a lot from balance, beauty, and controlled simplicity.
Overall, looking at the final product of my sketches, I was really taken aback by the power of squares. I never really thought that so much information could be conveyed with simple black squares. In addition, it was really interesting to look at the word pairs side by side and view all 12 squares as a group, comparing and contrasting. I think each square helped convey different senses of the words, allowing all 6 to portray the word fairly strongly.
Part II (a): Sketches to Digital Iterations
To start, I created a few different sketches in Illustrator for each word and then tried to narrow it down.
For example, these were two of the iterations I did for active:
Similarly, below are some of the iterations I did for graceful, adjusting size and rotation.
The leftmost square shows how I created a curve first, then positioned the squares to follow it. I combined the idea of corners following a curve from the middle right fluid sketch with the increasing curve idea of the middle right graceful sketch, hoping the connected corners would add a sense of continuum and delicateness to graceful.
Eventually, I ended up with the following sketches. Each row corresponds to a word — top to bottom: active, passive, graceful, clumsy.
From these, I narrowed it down to the 5 sketches (I had a hard time choosing for graceful) I wanted to work with, plus my figure/ground composition:
I chose the “rocket ship” composition for active because I felt like it conveyed motion the clearest. My inspiration for the other composition was projectile-motion physics problems, but I felt that the composition itself didn’t inherently communicate as much motion as I saw in it.
I chose the single square for passive because I felt the minimalism fit with passivity. The inspiration behind the middle composition (see two images above) was the idea of a passive person always relying on others, but there almost seemed to be too much “motion” in the small square resting on the large square. The left composition (see two images above) was inspired by the idea of a square “going into hiding,” but I felt this message wasn’t conveyed very clearly through the composition.
For graceful, I liked the single square on point because it really conveyed balance to me. I liked the simplicity and found it to be very elegant. On the other hand, I liked the curve composition because it reminded me of the grace and elegance in a dancer’s arm. I felt that the whitespace between the squares gave off the same lightness and airiness, with a certain sense of control yet delicateness. I also noticed that Gestalt Theory worked a bit better for the digital iterations, as I had better control over the placement of my squares and where the eye would fill in the whitespace.
For clumsy, I chose the “free-fall” composition because it spoke best to what I imagine as clumsy in my head. Clumsy has a certain aspect of motion and chaos to me, so the “aftermath” composition (see two images above) felt too calm and stationary.
In general, I found it difficult to do the reversible figure/ground piece while still keeping squares distinct — a lot of my ideas involved curved lines or large chunks of black vs. white, where the squares would no longer be distinguishable. Overall, I was decently satisfied with this figure/ground, but was worried it may be too generic.
Next, I looked at my compositions to see which would benefit from color. Overall, I found it difficult to pick a color that could convey both words in the pair. I felt that I found purple to be graceful, but that it had little to no meaning for clumsy. Similarly, I thought yellow or red would convey active well, but would be contradictory for passive. Eventually, I settled on purple for graceful and clumsy, playing with a few different shades:
Ultimately, I settled on the right set of compositions above for the desk critique.
Part II (b): Refining Digital Iterations
At my desk critique, there were a few different points. Kaylee pointed out that my figure/ground composition didn’t follow the rules, as it involved white squares. In addition, she mentioned that the tangent point in the left graceful composition was actually a source of tension, so she suggested having it “float” a bit. She also suggested I push both graceful compositions a bit more — the curve composition’s angular whitespace between the squares detracted from the graceful feel.
By the time Julia had come around, I had also created a few different iterations of active:
The leftmost is tilted, with a slightly rotated large square. The middle is straight, with the large square rotated at 45 degrees. Julia suggested that I try the tilted composition with a 45 degree rotation and the straight composition with a slight rotation, and compare all of those. She also suggested that I push the graceful compositions a bit more as well, and make them more distinctively graceful. Lastly, Julia also suggested I work with the clumsy composition a bit more. She said to establish whether the composition was mid-fall (and in that case maybe have the squares bleed off the bottom edge to convey that continuous motion) or had already fallen (and have some squares “resting” on the ground to convey its existence).
The first thing I did after my critique was start exploring with figure/ground. I started playing with making a design that filled a certain section of the square, then copying and pasting it until it filled the entire square.
Next, I started making designs within a quarter of the art board, then copying, moving, and rotating it 3 times until the entire art board was filled up. Sometimes, I would notice patterns or shapes within these compositions, then start a new one based on that pattern or shape. The following compositions are in the order that I made them, starting from the left:
The first two compositions are made up of the same “quarter art board design,” but with different rotations. In the third composition, I tried to make the white and black more concentrated, as I felt the single black square in the middle of the white made it hard to see the black as the figure. In the fourth composition, I tried to play with the + shape and adding small black squares here and there to add more of a sense of randomness to it — I wondered if making it more random would prevent the user from getting too attached to their instinctual interpretation of the figure and ground. With the fifth composition, I started focusing on solely the + shapes, still making the pattern a little more unconventional than just alternating black +s and white +s. In the sixth composition, I drew from “cross” shape found in the middle of the fifth composition. I thought that the larger concentrations of black and white would make it less busy/confusing to look at. For the seventh composition, I drew the “dumbbell” shape from the center of the fifth composition. Again, I was experimenting with not having the black and white so intermingled.
After staring at all of these figure/ground compositions, I also noticed that once I zoomed out, it gave me a better idea of what my mind was drawn to and if I could see both figure/ground relationships. There was something about staring at the compositions with such contrasting colors on a screen that made it difficult to really focus on after a while.
To take a break from figure/ground, I started adjusting my active composition. I followed Julia’s advice and tried all of the combinations of 45 degree rotation, slight rotation, tilted, and straight. I also played around with the bleed, as it gave a certain sense that the square would just keep moving off of the page.
Ultimately, I narrowed it down to the following four:
The first was the original, so I wanted to keep it for reference. For the second, I felt the slight downward random angle helped add another aspect of motion to the composition. However, I chose a non-bleeding version, as I felt the bleed cut off that downward angle in a strange way. For the third composition, I liked the 45 degree rotation with the tilt. I felt the random angle was a bit too confusing with the tilt, but I liked the bleed as I felt there was a good sense of continuity. For the fourth composition, I liked how the placement according to the Rule of Thirds also added another aspect of motion.
Ultimately, I chose the third composition. The tilt really resonated with me and I thought it was a nice combination of this composition with my original inspiration of projectile physics problems — the problems typically involve some projectile being launched to the right at some angle from the horizontal.
Next, I moved on to adjusting the clumsy composition. Again, I took Julia’s comments into consideration and added a “ground.” I then adjusted the sizing and placement of the falling squares to fit better with the new squares on the ground. Below are the original (left) and final (right) compositions.
Next, I moved on to graceful. Below are the different iterations I tried (in order).
First, I tried to decrease the radius of the curve that all of the squares follow, hoping it would lessen the angular feel of the whitespace. Next, I experimented with having the squares blend into each other. I was curious if the continuous flow of black would help add to the continuous feel of graceful. However, I didn’t like how chunky it looked. In the 3rd composition, I tried to draw inspiration from one of my original sketches where the sides of the squares followed the curve. However, I could quickly tell that this created an even more angular look, so moved on to a new idea.
In the 4th composition, I tried to again eliminate the angular whitespace by having parallel lines between the squares as they followed the curve. Something about this seemed a bit disjointed, so in the 5th composition, I had them overlap a bit to give a more continuous look. I also increased the size of the squares, as I felt that gave the composition a certain sense of strength. However, the composition reminded me too much of a jagged hole in the page (or the page being unzipped), which felt too rigid to convey graceful. Feeling uninspired by my changes, I reverted back to the original composition. In the 6th composition, I tried to elongate the curve even more, hoping to really stretch out the angular whitespace.
Next, in the 7th composition, I oriented the squares similarly to the 4th and 5th compositions, parallel to the sides of the art board. This still felt a little too rigid to me, so in the 8th composition, I added a slight angle to add to the flow of the curve. The tilt to the left seemed to go against the direction of the curve, so I tilted the squares to the right in the 9th composition.
However, I still wasn’t feeling completely satisfied with my graceful compositions, so I decided to experiment with some of the other sketches I had done.
Something about the idea of a balanced square on its tip really resonated with me, as much of my inspiration for graceful came from balance.
Per Kaylee’s suggestion, I had the square “float” just a bit to relieve some of the tension. I also added more squares to the composition, hoping to strengthen the idea of balance.
Still feeling somewhat unsatisfied, I decided to go back to my sketches and see if I could find any more inspiration. I settled on the bottom right sketch, as I liked the idea of making a circle from squares and thought it reflected how grace can come from rigidity and strength. It reminded me again of a dancer’s arms and body — when I dance, I really have to tighten and flex my arm muscles in order to constantly hold them in a delicate, graceful looking position. The inner rigidity results in outward grace.
As I transferred my sketch to a digital iteration, I noticed the star shape in my first composition (leftmost). In my 2nd composition, I decided to further explore the shape, wondering if the piece would be strengthened by defining the star and having the squares touch point to point. I found it interesting as possible inspiration for a figure/ground piece, but didn’t find it to be any more graceful. So, in my 3rd composition, I went in the other direction and made my squares smaller, hoping to weaken the image of the star (and make it more similar to my original sketch). I liked this better, but still wasn’t getting a lot of grace from it. In my 4th composition I decided to further play into the figure/ground possibility, having the squares overlap a bit to strengthen the black figure shape while maintaining the white star. Nothing much stemmed from this, so I went back to the graceful idea in the 5th composition, adding a balanced square in the middle hoping to further break up the star shape and add a sense of symmetry and balance.
Ultimately, after looking at all of my graceful compositions, I settled on the 9th one in the “curve” series. While I liked the other ideas, I felt that they could be used to convey many other words while the curve seemed to have an innate sense of grace to me. I also liked how it looked juxtaposed with my clumsy composition, as they both depicted falling squares. I think the similarity in the motion helped contrast the clumsy and graceful nature in which they were falling.
Lastly, I still wasn’t satisfied with my figure/ground compositions. I came back to some of the ideas I had before, mainly creating a pattern in 1/4 of the art board and then copying, rotating, and moving it.
I started with the composition below, drawing inspiration from the image often used to portray a geometric series (on the left):
I then copied and rotated it such that each diagonal pointed to the center. I thought this created an interested affect, and saw a building (similar to the Empire State Building) as the white figure, and the diagonals of black squares as the black figure. However, I wondered if (and Kaylee confirmed that) the composition needed a bit more black.
So, I tried to experiment with this general idea of squares decreasing along a diagonal:
The first composition is just the original with lines of decreasing squares along the midlines of the art board. I felt that the white figure was easy to see, but my eye couldn’t find a black figure easily. (The 2nd composition is just the original again). In the 3rd composition, I tried to keep playing with the idea of diagonals, but simplified the black figure by only having two square sizes. I thought that this created an interesting white figure, but again, the black figure was too difficult for me to see. I tried to remedy this in the 4th composition by adding more of a pattern to the black squares, which I found strengthened both figures — the white and black patterns were consistent, making them easier to switch between. In the 5th composition, I decided to experiment with a different black pattern, even more consistent than the one in the 4th composition. Overall, I liked the white “L” shapes and the black diagonals, but the asymmetry in the bottom left corner was bothering me. So, in the 5th composition, I shifted the pattern up and over one “small” square, happening to reflect the composition in the process.
Again, I looked at all of the figure/ground compositions next to each other and zoomed out. Ultimately, with the help of a friend, I decided that the 5th composition was easiest to switch the figure/ground relationships in. In addition, I contemplated reflecting it back so that the diagonals went from top left to bottom right to follow humans’ general reading pattern, but decided against it. I thought there was something about the diagonals going against our natural eye path that made the figure/ground relationship clearer.
Final Compositions and Reflections:
Below are my final compositions, which were printed on 11 x 14 80 lb cardstock.
Reflections:
Active/Passive — I think I could have pushed both of these compositions more. I think that the active composition is a little too literal, and could have benefited from some more unconventional inspiration. Similarly, although I like how the minimalism of my passive composition plays into the square’s passivity, I think I could have experimented a with it a bit more and taken it a step further.
Clumsy/Graceful — Overall, I think I’m pretty happy with clumsy and graceful. I like how they depict similar situations, which is further how the two of them next to each other make it seem like they both have squares falling from the middle. However, I do wish the color was a bit more of a regal purple. I tried to lighten the color a bit before printing, as the color prints darker than it appears on the screen. Unfortunately, it didn’t print as the exact color I wanted, which I think could have added another small layer to the compositions (especially for graceful).
Figure/Ground — I like the balance of larger and smaller squares because I think they offer some good variety in the pattern, yet don’t make the composition too busy or hard to look at. I think it is a bit easier for me to see the white as the figure, but overall switching between the two isn’t too difficult.
