CDF Project 2

Introduction

The intention behind this project is to explore how form and composition play into Gestalt principles in design. I am only allowed to utilize squares in these compositions. My goal is to gain more experience in applying these principles to effectively convey abstract concepts.

Initial Sketches

Work from 09/06/2020:

Thumbnail sketches for the concept of “serious” (left) and “playful” (right)

Thumbnail sketches for “dangerous” (left) and “safe” (right)

Thumbnail sketches for “quiet” (left) and “noisy” (right)

09/07/2020:

Looking over yesterday’s sketches, I like the serious/playful and quiet/noisy pairs best; I’m choosing these pairs to use for the rest of the project.

Depth exploration sketches for “playful” and “serious”.

I think there is more opportunity to play with depth using a 3rd color with the playful/serious pair, so I started tweaking the composition of my favorite thumbnails and played with using a 3rd tone.

Exploring variations of a “noisy” concept.

The concept I chose for “noisy” is kind of busy, so I played around with where the white spaces lie. Ultimately, I’m most comfortable in a digital format and it seems more straightforward to adjust the exact positioning in that context, so I’ll leave it there for now and explore more while using Illustrator.

Porting to Illustrator

09/10/2020

For the more complicated compositions, I imported the photos of my sketchbook so I could overlay the digital shapes.

Noisy and quiet compositions ported to Adobe Illustrator

Lots of rectangles in Noisy…

I added a few extra squares to Noisy, as per Jiyoung’s suggestion. It helped to differentiate from Playful, although they both featured squares in a variety of angles and different sizes. I also played more with white space, not wanting all of it to be concentrated in the lower right corner.

Playful and serious compositions

For Playful, the exact balance of the squares involved a lot of tweaking. I wanted it to look haphazard in an organic way. For Serious, which is much simpler, I basically just tried reversing the colors back and forth until I decided which I liked best.

09/14/2020

Preliminary thumbnail sketches for the reversible composition.

I had a hard time thinking of something that wasn’t just “checkerboard” or “stripes”; everything just seemed a bit flat, a little too tessellated, or a little too irreversible. I settled on the lowermost sketch.

Beginning to port reversible sketch into Adobe Illustrator

Importing it into Illustrator gave me more flexibility to tweak the angle and scoot things around. Varying the size of the squares as the image proceeds to the lower right, as though growing closer, added visual interest.

Playing around with the exact positioning and what parts are “offscreen”.

09/15/2020

Draft to be critiqued and revised:

Noisy and quiet.

Playful and serious.

Reversible.

Feedback from Instructors:

Anna’s feedback on noisy and quiet

Anna suggested tweaking the positioning of some of the existing squares in Noisy to improve the balance, and thought that Quiet would be better off with even spacing between each block.

Feedback on Playful and Serious

Anna suggested moving some of the upper blocks in Playful around to avoid it looking too rectangular and improve the flow. She also suggested moving the tiny block closer in Serious.

Feedback on reversible piece

Anna liked the general shape and how the white space echoed that shape, but felt that the placement of the other black blocks and how they grew larger was too overwhelming, throwing off the balance.

In light of these suggestions, here are my revised versions:

Final Versions

Noisy (left) and Quiet (right)

Playful (left) and Serious (right)

Reversible figure ground composition

09/17/2020:

I received the following feedback from classmates:

Feedback from classmates.

Generally, serious was poorly received and misinterpreted as dangerous from classmates, but my instructors didn’t seem to agree. I’m okay with serious overlapping with a dangerous concept; for me, serious has a connotation of intimidation and discomfort. In light of this, I am opting not to revise Serious.

Instructor feedback:

• Noisy: questioned why the white space in the lower right area was present. I don’t have a compelling reason beyond the fact that I think it looks good and I think some contrast is needed to add visual interest so it doesn’t turn into flat grey from a distance. That said, adding stuff just because I think it’s cool isn’t exactly thoughtful design; I’ll keep it in mind for future compositions.
• Quiet: looks better.
• Playful/serious: no significant notes, looks okay.
• Figure/ground composition: instructors didn’t like that it was skewed and off-center; made the cropping of the rightmost blocks unintentionally distracting. Also didn’t care for how close some of the black squares were at the point of the V, resulting in a narrow point in the white part. As per their recommendation, I played a little more with the shapes below.

09/18/2020:

Playing with the positioning of the reversible composition:

Playing with size and angle to improve on the weird cropping.

No angle variant.

I still prefer it tilted because I find it more visually intriguing, but I agree that it was improved with some tweaking.

Lessons Learned

I have some visual art background (purely on an amateur basis), but design is a much more intentional discipline than purely “draw a portrait of someone and add a skull in the corner because it looks cool and ominous”. As I work, I need to question my decisions and my own thought process more. It’s also okay for me to use concepts from reality to guide my thinking; just because I’m developing a more abstract composition doesn’t mean that my thinking has to start entirely from a purely nonphysical place.