Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Project No. 5

Continuing the journey working with type and looking at the forms, not to read, but for each form's aesthetic value. I really wanted to work on adding some depth, seeing as most of my work seems kind of flat to me. I really enjoy the forms of the numbers that are a part of Baskerville Oldstyle. 























fig. 1
Fives and threes have always been so beautiful to me so I just started moving those forms around, smaller ones, larger ones, and in-between. I started to see clouds, and I wanted to fence off the space, but not to trap it. The threes began to take shape and pour out of the top of the page in sort of wave-like fashion. All of their effort culminates in a beautiful shape, and an outpouring of color. The backdrop is a very light herringbone pattern to add a little bit of texture to the composition. The empty space feels right. One of my favourite compositions so far.























fig. 2
I feel like I have been stuck in a rut in my color schemes. Everything has been feeling similiar to me and I wanted to break away. I was in my room, frusterated for a while, and I came upstairs to talk to my roommate Danielle. She told me that I should make rainbows out of the letterform of a U and just put it all over. I was joking and showing her how to use Illustrator and I came up with this design. The color scheme was a complete joke to me, but then I ended up loving it. I overlapped some of the Us, linked them together and put them on a diagonal plane. This was completely out of my normal routine. I enjoyed it more than I've enjoyed anything lately. I can make up so many shapes when looking at this, the dimension is very interesting and really makes you think for a little bit. I sincerely liked this composition and that is unusual.























fig. 3
I doodle a lot and I tend to come up with a lot of looping, ribbon-like letterforms and figures. Not many of the margins in my notes for classes escape my drawing. (fig. 4 and fig. 5) This sort of form, stretching into an unruly or of organic ribbon-like figure just permeates most of my thoughts. I think about the extensions of letterforms, ascenders and descenders all the time. This is just a simple, simple rendition of those thoughts. A light pattern in the background to add interest, and lots of space to just get lost in. The simplicity of the forms are easier to appreciate in the free space. I love the simple beauty of this composition. Less is sometimes more. I sometimes worry I appreciate simplicity too much, because Luke started talking in class about how we need to have more complexity in our designs. Our compositions in the future need to have more variation in the size of the content, they need to be able to be large or small and still have enough  variety within themselves. I worry too much. :)









fig. 4






















fig. 5

1 comment:

Mara said...

I also love and am drawn to simple designs and I love all 3 of your compositions. I would totally put them on my wall.

It's almost harder to leave a design alone and stop yourself from adding more and more and more because you think it's what people want to see. White space can be really powerful. I definitely struggle with that too.