depth and volume

This week I had to create a design with the spatial illusions of both depth and volume.  This design came about in a very easy manner.  I didn't even try any other designs this week.  It took me a little bit of time to get the details correct but after having completed my perspective class it wasn't very difficult to create depth on a flat page.  This is one of those designs that really shows how nice it is to work with adobe illustrator, that program is so versatile that you can save loads of time if you know how to use it.  Other than the pleasure of figuring out the designs to fit the criteria I think that the use of illustrator to do everything was very useful.  As much as I like this design it was rather simple and took almost no time to create.  It's amazing how the simplest things can sometimes have the most appeal.



Asymmetrical Design

For this assignment I had to use black and white forms to create an asymmetrical design.  I played with this for a while getting the details the way I wanted but I came up with the general layout pretty quickly.  I really like the way the more organic and flowing circles counter balance the rigid straight lines on the other side.  My initial layout (as you can see at the bottom) had the circles stopping before they intersected with the straight side.  My instructor told me that it was to balanced and that one side needed to "win."  When he first told me that I didn't agree, I like the idea of the two sides being in balance with neither "winning," but looking at the final design I think it does work better but I can't explain why.  By this point in the class the entire process feels like playing and I look forward to each different assignment to see what I'll come up with.

design class 3

For my next design project I had to use black and white forms to create a design with formal balance.  I was debating on what I wanted to use and I saw a blanket that we bought for my son that has a really cool turtle pattern on it.  So I used a similar turtle design and then decided on a plant like semi flowerish design to go with it.  I had a lot of fun working with this composition, until now most of my designs had been more abstract and I found it nice to work with symbols to create something.  Even though it seems obvious it is a nice moment when you realize that you can really do anything (within the limits of the assignment) with a design.  Even though you may intellectually know that you can do anything I think, at least for me, that their is a kind of mental block that makes you see things a certain way and makes you think about things in a certain way.  Whenever I have an assignment that shows me that you don't have to see things or do things the way you always have or the way you think you have to, that moment is always an amazing moment for me.  In one sense I hope I always remember that their are no limits on design but I hope I never lose those amazing moments while I'm designing.



design class 2

For my second assignment in Fundamentals of Design I had to create a form using 2 - 4 black and/or white of the same size.  Then repeat the pattern 2 - 4 times.  I really enjoyed this assignment, I felt that it was open enough to allow for a lot of creativity but was also restrictive enough to keep me from being overwhelmed.  I used 3 circles and repeated them 4 times for the design that I ultimately turned in for a grade, but I showed my teacher 4 different designs to allow him to choose the one he liked and then did more work on that one to make it as interesting as possible.  I normally don't like abstract designs but found myself enjoying this assignment.  I think because it was a unique challenge for me, I had to work in a way that I never had before and even though the design is simple I think it came out quite well.  With this assignment and several of the assignments I did for this class I found that it was fun to do work, that simply sitting down and exploring shapes and the relationships between the shapes was enjoyable and made the majority of this class a lot of fun.

Here are the original 4 designs I submitted