Exercise: Car

So my story was how my mom and I got a flat tire and caused even more traffic as we waited for AAA to get there. My scribbles were far more fascinating than my story. It was just a bunch of lines with loops in them. When I drew it, I wasn't really thinking about how it relates to the story. But now, Squiggly lines like that are pretty representative of getting a flat tire. There are parts where it's flat and then there are parts that are curvy.

This is what I came up with:

Closure

Closure is a method the brain uses to complete an incomplete shape. You see it a lot in logos but it can be used to enhance a design.

Examples:

World Wildlife Foundation

Even though, the Panda isn't complete, the eye knows it's a panda.

USA Network

Framing

Like hierarchy, framing is a way to highlight what really matters. I always confuse framing with cropping. But after looking this up, framing is how a photo is shown and cropping is cutting certain aspects of the photo. So, if you take a picture of a cow, for example, you'd possibly frame it by putting the cow, that is eating grass, in the middle of the picture. Cropping would be to cut out the cow's legs (metaphorically) and only use the top half for whatever reason.

Examples:

Sources

http://www.gdbasics.com/html/framing/framing.html

https://videohive.net/item/hands-join-together-to-make-finger-framing/8517335

http://photographyblogger.net/framing/

Exercise: Ten Duel Commandments

What stood out to me when I read the lyrics to the Ten Duel Commandments was how official the rules are to something that is so archaic. It was also interesting that there was so much double-checking, even triple-checking, to make sure they all want to do it. This song is pretty self-aware about how pointless the duels actually are. I love that Lin-Miranda chose to do it this way.

When asked to create something, I thought of listing the rules like a document. But that had already been done. This is Hamilton we are talking about. I went back to the drawing board. I looked at how the Ten Commandments were written on a stone tablet and thought this could be on something duel related. I found a picture of a guy with a gun upwards (which is fitting considering the ending) and I made a silhouette.

The tricky part then became how am I going to fit all the rules onto the silhouette. Should I have the words over the gun? What lyrics should I include? Then I remembered what we learned in class on what really matters. I didn't use the exact phrasing for a lot of the rules but basically the bigger text is the main rule and the text under adds to it in some way.

Here is the final product:

Gap

Gap is a well-established brand with a highly limited style palette. Working within these confines was challenging but ultimately fun. Gap is already well-known, so the style shouldn't be "too out there", but that was my thought process throughout.

I started to understand the challenges that Gap has. Most of Gap's advertising is simple, centered, and white text. That is boring from a design perspective. I had to use four different marketing materials but still remaining consistent, which made it difficult. I took on this challenge by adding typography into the figure/ground compositions to create both a consistent series and visual diversity to avoid boredom. Ultimately, I isolated the point size and color of the word “Sale”—much like Gap does in their actual advertising. 

SPRING: "Iris, Monochrome, inspired by windy weather 

SUMMER: “Nile”, analogous, inspired by a river surrounded by grass.

FALL: “Navy”, complementary, inspired by Halloween and the orange leaves

WINTER: “Fortress of Solitude”, neutral, inspired by Superman’s home

Scale

Scale refers to the size of one object to another object. It's also has to do with the relationship of the objects, such as how close objects are to each other. Objects can be the same size to each other, one can be smaller than another. It's important to get the scale right because it makes for realistic proportions.

It's kind of like hierarchy in a way. It all has to do with how the different components interact with each other.  The main difference though, is hierarchy is about what gets the most attention. Whereas, scale is more general about what component is bigger.

Examples:

Hierarchy

Hierarchy is more common in typography than in images. But images (especially posters) can have hierarchy too. Generally, when something is bigger or different than the rest of what's on the page, that gets paid more attention to. For instance:

This is a movie poster for "Moon". There are three aspects of this piece that your eye is drawn to. You're first drawn to the image because it's big and unique. I've never seen the movie but I can gather that it's about a guy who gets stuck on the moon somehow. The fact that I can get all that is because of how strong the image is. It should be what your eye is first drawn to. Then you're led to the title because MOON is in big letters in the biggest font size and it's the whitest text of the poster. Then it's either Sam Rockwell at the top or the tagline. Rockwell because it's all by itself and the tagline because it's right above MOON. Lastly, if you're still interested, you read whatever is at the bottom. 

I mostly googled visual hierarchy for these examples. These are just funny things I found in my search:

Exercise: International News

My article was about the Paris police finding a bunch of gas cartons in a car right by the Seine River. Certainly scary considering what happened on Bastille day.

A lot of the words I didn't know were places in France. One of these words was Arrondisement, which is a french way of saying Administrative District. There 20 all together. When I looked at google maps, they are all tightly together. The car with a lot of gas was found in the 5th Arrondisement, apparently one of the oldest arrondisement in Paris. 

I probably could done something on the actual situation but I was kind of fascinated on how these Arrondisements work. In Boston, there are different regions: Back Bay, South Boston, Beacon Hill, North End, Roxbury, and Dorchester. As well as the neighboring towns and cities: Cambridge, Brookline, Newton, Dedham, Needham, and Milton. New York City has 5 burroughs: Brooklyn, Manhattan, Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. Like Back Bay, Manhattan where the real city is gets organized in a grid-like style. Paris is different it seems. There are neighboring places but the actual city is separated by different districts. Like the Hunger Games.

So at the end of the class, I had something like this:

I had labeled where the Arrondisements were. I even made a icon for the two landmarks that I know are in Paris: The Eifel Tower and the Lourve. As well as the Seine River. I created a border as well. This got me to thinking I should create borders within the Arrondisements. 

So I literally went on google maps and searched "1st Arrondisement" and then using the pen tool, I figured out the territories.  I then went in order so the 2nd was next, then the 3rd, etc. These are not exact territories but they are pretty close.  I'm sure if you're in Paris, they all kind of meld together. It certainly does for Boston, in a way. 

I was debating about what color I should use. I figured the France flag would make sense to overlay it. I used a neutral color for the background of the whole thing to make Paris pop more. I think it's pretty self-explanatory. I learned a lot about how Paris is organized. I wonder how other cities are organized, not just Boston and New York.

Figure/Ground

"Figure-ground refers to the shapes, space or forms within a composition. In simplest terms the figure is what you notice and the ground is everything else."
https://visscom.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/the-principle-of-figure-ground/

Figure-ground is positive and negative space. When I was searching for examples, all of them were two images in one. They all play with space. They are all an optical illusion in a way, where you can look at the image in two ways. At least that's what good figure-ground is supposed to be. 

Here are some examples:

Color

It's hard to describe color. It's something that everyone sees. If you wanted to get philosophical there is no way to know that the red I see is the exact same red that others see. I'd never fully know. But there is no doubting that color plays an important part in not just art, but in life.

It is pretty cool that each color has a different meaning and feeling to it. Like blue has a calming feel to it. Probably because the ocean and sky are blue. It can also represent sadness. Red has more angry feeling to it. Maybe because fire is associated with that color? Green is more nature-based and organic in that sense. Probably because trees, stems, and grass are all green. Yellow has a brighter personality and stands out in a crowd. Yellow is by far the brightest of these 6 main colors. Purple is trippy. But maybe that's my own view on the color. Orange has this high energy about it. Also, likely because it is red and yellow combined.

Primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. Secondary colors are green, orange, and purple/violet. Red and blue make purple. Blue and yellow make green. Yellow and red make orange. Tertiary colors are the inbetween colors of those six main colors. So yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, red-violet, and red-orange.

Complementary colors are opposite on the color wheel. Yellow and purple, blue and orange and red and green. When these colors are used together they are made to pop. I always think of these colors in sports teams. Yellow and Purple are the Lakers colors. Blue and Orange are the Thunders colors. Green and Red are Christmas colors and also the Wild colors. Even the tertiary colors have their complementary colors like blue-green and red-orange. 

Analogous colors are three colors that are right next to each other. All three of these colors are primary, secondary or tertiary. So red, orange and red-orange are analogous colors. 

Monochrome colors are colors that only use one color but if you add white or black. Basically different shades of one color So for blue, you could use all the shades of blue from sky blue to midnight blue. 

Lastly, neutrals are colors that are without color. So like beige, ivory, browns, black, grays, and white. These colors don't have a ton of meaning to them but they go well with all primary, secondary and tertiary colors.

It's kind of interesting that every color can be described as a mixture of other colors. Turquoise is a light blue-green. Blue-green is half green and half blue. Green is a mixture of yellow and blue. Blue is a primary color. I guess you can't really define blue, red, yellow as a mixture of other colors, but for most colors you can. 

Even black and white can be described in relation to other colors. Black is too much color and white is devoid of color. Same for neutral colors I mentioned. Brown is basically a dark orange. Ivory is a really light yellow. Beige is a mixture of brown and ivory. 

Exercise: Sol LeWitt

When I read Color Me Real about Sol LeWitt, I was intrigued by his use of color for obvious reasons. He uses a lot of colors and geometric shapes. Towards the end of the article, it goes through his process and what materials he uses. It says that he uses gel-colored lights. This made me curious as to what that is. It turns out that gel-colored lights are opaque color cards that are tinted in a certain color. It's used for theatre and it's a way to alter the color of the lights. 

When I was told to make something, I started to make geometric shapes. I tried to make them all the same shape but that didn't go so well. So I went with this first image. I also was messing around with opacity to get that gel-colored light effect.

I made the squares in primary colors and the rectangles in secondary colors. It's all based on the color wheel. I then rotated it and messed around with the opacity even more to look like this:

This seemed so generic to me. So I combined the rotations together and that's the result of these 3 pieces.

So this is my final piece up here. It's a little different from Sol Lewitt because of all the overlapping but the use of color and geometric shapes is an inspiration in this piece.