Experiment 2: Form + Composition — Communication Design Fundamentals
Part 1: Sketching thumbnails
Using only black squares, sketch 5 compositions for each of the following words: order, tension, congestion, playfulness, comfort. Test the limits of the Gestalt principles of design.
Below I document my initial 5x5 sketches. I began by creating a word cloud brainstorm around the primary word. Then, I jumped into the sketches. After completing each sketch, I quickly jotted down the words, concepts, and themes that had come to mind for that sketch. Each sketch is a slightly different interpretation of the primary word with its own type of vibe.
Order
“Order” was the first word I did, so my creativity was still turning on and not at its peak…
Tension
“Tension” felt better but although I had a bunch of word ideas in my word cloud, I couldn’t think of as many unique ideas as I thought I would be able to.
Congestion
Honestly, “Congestion” was probably the hardest word for me. Similar to “Tension”, I feel like I couldn’t think of many unique ideas and thus repeated some concepts across the sketches. But also, that might be okay considering they are all supposed to represent the same word anyways…
Playfulness
I think “Playfulness” was my favorite word to sketch! After the word cloud brainstorm, it still took me a couple of minutes to think about what “Playfulness” would actually look like, but once I did the first sketch I was able to come up with the other ones faster and more naturally and on the spot. This may be due to the nature of the word since it’s quite carefree, flexible, and dynamic unlike the previous words, so I didn’t feel like I was repeating concepts or ideas that I had implemented for previous words.
Comfort
“Comfort” was the last word and also a bit hard. Maybe because to me, the word comfort feels very similar to “Order” so I wasn’t sure how clear my compositions needed to be, i.e. should someone be able to look at one and know exactly what word I was trying to go for? I realized the answer was no; everyone is going to interpret these designs differently anyways. So just because there might be some overlap in the vibes of “Comfort” and “Order” for me, there might not be for other people. So I just went for it and sketched what I felt were good representations of Comfort and the concepts in the surrounding word cloud, and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, i.e. my sketches for “Comfort” are all comforting for me.
Next step: critiques from classmates + instructors in class on 9/10, then identify the strongest ideas, iterate on them based on feedback, and convert to digital using Illustrator.
Part 2: Digital iterations
Next I converted my top two sketches for each word into a digital medium on Illustrator. Below I document those sketches as well as several iterations and new ideas I may have had in the moment. Ultimately I tasked myself to choose between many versions for each word in order to come up with my final 5 compositions to submit.
Order
Tension
Congestion
Playfulness
Comfort
In the end, I had the hardest time choosing between variations for Tension and Congestion. Below, I set aside my options for Final 5 (each row) and chose amongst those.
The winner was row 5 which went with my gut instincts and original ideas for both Tension and Congestion. To be honest, I think that all of my compositions in row 5 were pretty much decided by my gut. (Honestly that’s how I live life.)
Part 3: Final 5 & Why
Here’s my final 5.
Now I’m going to explain my feelings on each piece. Sorry that there are no borders around each image. Whatever.
Order
I chose this piece for Order because it represents stability. The symmetry and similarity of the 4 black squares helps unite them together, while the whitespace in between the squares creates distance but still keeps a degree of closure. This helps the squares act like a very stable and orderly foundation/base.
Tension
This piece was inspired by my experiences playing Jenga, so I hope the principle of isomorphic correspondence is evident. I create tension by creating asymmetry because in Jenga, symmetry results in stability while asymmetry often results in the opposite (hence the symmetry in my previous piece for Order). Here, the asymmetry is realized in the block sizes, stacking, and the placement of the tower itself. As it the tower is about to fall to the right, tension is also created but realized that these blocks are about to fall off the “page” or the composition borders, rather than into the middle which would have made the equilibrium point of the piece closer to the center (what I don’t want).
Congestion
My composition for Congestion was similarly inspired by blocks, but in this case like blocks falling randomly into a square bucket and landing in a way due to gravity. In this way, blocks can get stuck during their fall and thus will not perfectly land and fill the space. However, the proximity of the squares with them all touching at the corners but never overlapping aims to convey Congestion still in an orderly and organic way that can be visualized with gravity.
Playfulness
For playfulness, I followed a similar strategy to Congestion where I wanted to maintain some order in the piece in order to make it feel not so overwhelming that one cannot even understand the piece. I was inspired by the principles of similarity, proximity and common fate here. For similarity and proximity, I grouped similar size squares together and using the concept of common fate, angled each group of squares inward towards each other to create a sort of equilibrium point in the center of each grouping. The inspiration here was 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders all on the playground and the types of huddles that may form in different areas. I still try to maintain a unity to the overall piece by having the same number of squares in each grouping and keeping the similarity there.
Comfort
Finally, Comfort. For me, I feel more comfortable when I’m warm and I associate warmth with the darker color of black and coolness with white. Thus, I was inspired by the concept of figure-ground to create a large pocket of warmth in the center of the piece (for equilibrium and symmetry) while having the whitespace around this pocket act in contrast. I intentionally choose to use more black than white in this piece to overall emphasize the warmth rather than feel like warm and cool are represented equally. Also, an octagon/stop sign shape is definitely familiar which brings comfort. Finally, there can be an aspect of closure here in terms of “closing the gaps” of the octagon whereby if the viewer feels more comfortable with a rounded circular shape, they can hopefully visualize that as well by looking at the shape overall/big picture.
Overall, there is a common theme of organization to each piece. Although some pieces are more dynamic and asymmetric than others due to the nature of the words they represent, they are all more or less inspired by real-world experiences and feelings of mine :)