Monday, March 05, 2007

Graphic Design: grid system project, parts I and II





Okay, so this is what I've been doing in Graphic Design for the first part of the semester... part II, the last picture in the series, is due this evening. The grid and the first part of the project were due a couple weeks ago.

I wish I could explain to you what these projects were about... but the truth is I'm not sure that I understand them myself. Learning about graphic design is like learning a foreign language... it goes back to the visual decision making that I learned about in 3D, but my teacher also talks a lot about intuition and feeling the decision. She talks a lot about how designers are somewhat schizophrenic, having to be crazy and free and creative while designing and then being anal and neat during execution.

All designs (magazine pages and covers, book covers, posters, billboards, t-shirts, business cards and flyers, etc), she says, all of them have an internal structure that helps the viewer make sense of what he or she is seeing... helps move the eye and create closure in the design.

NOW, the first picture in the series is a picture of my actual grid (a gird is any system of lines, straight, curved, or other wise, that helps the designer place items like text and image into the design so that those items relate to each other). The second picture is an abstract design based on my grid system. And the last picture is a translation of my design that includes text and image.

Part I and II of this project were graded on many different criteria: form, balance, unity, movement, negative space (was there charged negative space or no), contrast of scale, contrast of value, and anomaly (does the design break away from the grid in sufficient ways to create interest).

So, anyway, I don't know if that helps you understand what you're seeing, but just so you know, I had fun with these projects. Hard for me to wrap my head around but lots of fun in the making.

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