Experiment 1: Gestalt

The experiment is to design for five different concepts:

order | congestion | tension | playfulness | comfort

using black squares.

I started by thinking about the order. Naturally, I started by playing around with the number of squares to present the order of the number. Then, I tried to add the order of the size into the design.

The next is congestion. The way I tried to convey this idea is to incorporate a lot of squares with different sizes and angles. Overlapping them together gives me some sense of congestion. I also used asymmetry, but the result is not ideal.

The next is tension. This is my favorite part. I came across a lot of circumstances where the tension can show up, such as falling down, a small one supporting a big one, etc. I like the upper-left one the most, it seems like a square is dropping, and what’s waiting for it is a lot of uncapped needle tops.

Next to the playfulness. For this concept, I played around with tilting the squares and making them follow a funny shape like a spiral. It’s important to show the sense of movement and I think the last one really creates a beautiful flow and a sense of moving along the flow.

The last one is comfort. This one is the most challenging one for me since I feel that it’s a very similar idea to the order one. I used the idea of symmetry mainly. Hope I can get some inspiration from other’s work.

Feedback and digitalized work:

Order: Amanda and Hannah like the second one, and Hannah suggests me to play around with the edge to show more “order”.

Tension: I like both and I am satisfied with what I got here hahhh.

Congestion: I intentionally leave some white space in between and that works well. Instructors prefer the left one because it’s more unique and the contrast between a congested mass and the remaining white space does emphasize the idea of congestion.

Playfulness: I failed to reproduce the leftmost design digitally, but I came across this new design in the middle. It looks like a cute cartoon figure is walking with head high and chest out. I got some suggestions for making the human figure more clear, I tried to add two little hands but I failed to make it good-looking.

Comfort: Very hard. I created these two pieces, but they are all kinda boring. Maybe comfort for me is very similar to stationary following some regular pattern, frozen, symmetry…