What Language Looks Like: Written Reflection

In this assignment, we were to select a word and find ways to effectively convey the meaning of the word using space, placement, arrange and modification of the letters. In the first part of this project, we limited our explorations to two dimensions and black and white. We created a minimum of 20 hand-crafted collages, using tracing paper, black paper, white paper, and a sharpie. The idea was to familiarize ourselves with the word itself and begin to come up with ways to express the meaning of the word using only a 6 X 6 square piece of paper as a plane and the following techniques:

·       Spacing

·       Placement

·       orientation of the letters (rotate, reflect)

·       overlapping of letters

·       cropping of letters

·       slicing of letters

·       omit or repeat letters

·       black letters and white letters (positive and negative)

. After this portion, we then used Illustrator and the pathfinder tool to create ten compositions. When this was complete, we chose three of the best to refine. The last part of the two dimensional project involved adding color. We did five different color studies for each of the three designs, using a minimum of three hues. The following techniques were required to be explored for each design:

·       show space using a dark background--lighter values and strong chromas advance in space;

·       show space using a light background--darker values and strong chromas advance in space ;

·       show a shallow space using the illusion of transparency;

·       show flat space that experiments with positive/negative, ie. figure/ground relationships;

·       show an ambiguous space: some shapes are advancing on a light background; other shapes are advancing on a dark background.

After creating a total of 15 color compositions, we were to select six of these to refine and hand in with the final three black and white compositions.