fundamentals of design

For the first week in my fundamentals of design class I had to create a design with equal parts positive and negative space where the figure/ground relationship would fluctuate.  I came up with two designs for this assignment (the other one is at the bottom of this post), one of the designs I tried to create an image and the other one, the one the teacher preferred I just used squares and circles in overlapping patterns.  With this being the beginning of the class I wasn't confident with the process and just played around with adobe illustrator until I came up with something that had an interesting look to it.  In some ways I think that a lack of the "rules" helped this design and I think that remembering to sometimes forget the rules can be an asset in future design work.  I do think that the feeling that you have to know something about design in order to appreciate certain designs was prevalent in the class, the teacher tended to choose designs that seemed almost inaccessible to the general population.  This attitude tends to bother me since I think one of the best aspects of design is that it can be appealing to a broad spectrum of people.  You shouldn't have to know about design in order to appreciate a well designed composition.  As the class went on I think I started leaning more towards the teacher in my designs but I tried to hold on to my original ideals as well as I could.  As I look back at my designs and write about them I hope I'll see how well I did.

For most of the assignments in this class I submitted several different designs for my teacher to choose from, I will post the one that was ultimately graded at the top but will post the others at the bottom.