February 11, 2021
For this project of generating designs using nothing but black squares to represent different words, I thought a lot about spacing, negative space, and angles. I found I tended to focus on different elements in creating different designs.
order:
For order, I found myself naturally gravitating towards symmetry and using squares exclusively either turned on a corner or laying perfectly in line with the boundaries. Additionally, using only a few different sizes helped it from being too varied. These generated largely symmetrical patterns. Even spacing also played a very strong role in my creation of these designs because it makes the images feel consistent, drawing the viewers eye to specific elements.
tension:
For tension, I focused on the illusion of movement and not being able to see the full picture. In the top two designs, the angles stacked against the border makes it feel as if the squares might topple over which I felt gave a semblance of trying to hold things together. In the middle left, I made them slightly off-centered, which I find very irritating. It makes the viewer want to correct the injustice. The middle right gives a sense of not being able to see the full picture, as if there is something to be seen both off to the side and underneath this hulking square. Finally, the last one contrasted order and movement, and I felt that tension was created in the idea of destroying an otherwise orderly design.
congestion:
Congestion again focused, similar to tension, in playing with negative space. In these, there are many more squares than in order, and many of them are overlapped. I felt that haphazardly strewing squares upon the square essentially achieved what I was envisioning. In the middle left, for example, there are so many varying sizes and angles to the squares, but yet none of them touch each other. There is no consistent theme to these designs, which is why I think they make the viewer feel congested — there is simply no place to clearly direct one’s eyeline.
playfulness:
Playfulness to me was being more organic with my designs. There is not quite a formula to this one, although I believe I had more success when incorporating various angles and sizes to these. Furthermore, when using different spacing and forgoing symmetry for the most part, I found the designs felt more whimsical. These were differentiated from congestion because they left much more negative space. This gives the foreground a chance to shine.
comfort:
Lastly, comfort to me in these designs was a minimalistic symmetry in many ways. I wanted something that was clear and drew the viewers eye to a piece without thought. The single square offers no questions: there is only one place to look. The equidistant spacing in these designs ensures the viewer is not distracted by yet another element of the picture. Instead, it is simple and not overwhelming.
February 15, 2021
After the initial designs on my iPad, I experimented with a few other ideas after receiving feedback.
The six designs on the left became my fresh take on order. From feedback, I was challenged to use less symmetry and take on a fresh definition of what order means. I took some of my previous designs and cut down on several squares and also zooming into certain pieces. I found that when I did this, it was still clearly orderly, but less so in the “traditional” sense of the word. The middle section of comfort had a similar development, but I took my one square idea and made it into two. I felt when there were just two, it created a sense of solidarity and dependability between the two “characters” as if it was them in the world together. Tension also took on a new form that came from a very small adjustment from the comfort design which strived to convey motion.
After that, I took my designs to illustrator:
These designs I chose for order due to the fact that I felt they were not perfectly symmetrical in every way but yet still conveyed order. I felt that the one on the left felt very balanced and stable and reminded me of a collage or a roll of film. The one on the right reminded me of a bird in flight if you were looking down at it, and the use of few squares in close proximity still made it a cohesive piece.
The top two tension pieces I received mixed feedback on. Specifically, the top left people felt was not a strong piece for tension. The top right I received feedback that it felt that you could imagine what was occurring off the screen and therefore it did not create tension the way I intended it to. However, I feel the top right has potential with some tweaks to better convey the word.
My focus for congestion was figure and ground. I wanted to play with the negative space in order to create congestion. Therefore, the odd shapes within the white space strived to make it appear almost claustrophobic within the design, as if there is very little space to exist where there are not squares.
For playfulness I primarily altered the square size and angles to create my images. I liked the left one more here because it clearly gives a path for the eye to follow. It is more organic than the right one, which reminded me much of a monster with crazy arms and legs.
I was urged to explore my initial comfort designs, and so I iterated on the two square design from previously on the iPad. However, I found that adding additional squares did not add to the sense of community that I was aiming for, and instead, it seemed to make the squares on the left feel more alone.
This was my final order design. I think it best conveyed the word without being overly complex and filling all of the foreground with squares.
This was my final iteration of tension. I added more black squares to the edges and made the primary square bigger to fill slightly more space. I think that this created more of a mystery of what is occurring off the page, and the small uses of corners and negative space gives a sense of wanting to fill those little spaces or move the pieces somehow.
My final congestion iteration was the same as the start. The background and foreground contrast really drew me, and I felt by using similar elements in both congestion in tension, but in different ways, made it such that the two designs fit together when considering all the 5 together.
Playfulness also remained largely the same. The center piece draws the eye, but the design overall is not too centered due to the offset of the other lines. The piece conveys a sense of movement without seeming too rigid, and I aimed to keep it at an orderly chaos.
Finally, comfort remained these two squares. They’re not quite grounded, not quite stable, but they remain together. I think that the companionship and solidarity within this design is what conveys comfort.
