Midterm Week! Day 7

Proximity is the principle that allows us to perceive groups based on how close their components are, like that rectangle made of smaller rectangles. To further drive home the point I tried adding another strip of color on the opposite side and adding a break in the lines to create two distinct groups, but it just ended up looking silly and I settled on this. It would have been a lot more impressive if I'd have taken a sepia image and selectively added color, so let's say I did that and call it good for a day.

The picture comes from Nunce.

And with that, Midterm Week is over! This project was completed way ahead of deadline, and now I can enjoy my spring break without having to worry about homework. So that's good.

Midterm Week! Day 6

 

Balance can refer to the amount of one element in relation to another, or how the elements are arranged in an image. In this picture the amount of night greatly outweighs the day, but the day has a stronger vibrancy and a more defined shape, giving it emphasis that equals that of the night.

I kept coming back to this desert trying to find an effect that worked with it. At one point it was divided up into colored strips like yesterday's image, but I felt like it had too much of its own color for that to work. Eventually I decided to take out the sky and see if I could jam anything in there, and a few layer masks and brightness sliders later the result was awesome.

The images used are the Pinnacle Desert in Western Australia (taken by Ilya Genkin) and the night sky over Vermont (taken by Chensiyuan).

Midterm Week! Day 5

Rhythm is probably the easiest principle to represent. It's the defining aspect of a pattern, anything that repeats in a noticeable way. Like these concentric rings, for example. The colors in this image are common print primaries, Key (Black), white, cyan, yellow, magenta, blue, red, and green. The image is of a cloudy day over the Flint Hills in Kansas and comes from photographer Lisle Alderton.

Midterm Week! Day 4

Continuation is the idea that a number of elements that differ from each other in a recognizable pattern can be perceived as a curve or bend. Here you can see a number of rectangles forming a curve with their shape.

This one was a hassle all around. I don't own Photoshop and I didn't have much access to the computer lab at school today, so the whole process was rushed and I got it done much later than I'd have liked. This is the first week-long event I've done where I don't have the images made up beforehand, and I'm struggling a bit. I might re-do this one before I hand in my midterm. We'll see.

Image is from Oceana.org

Midterm Week! Day 3

The source image for this one came from the Apollo 16 mission. Emphasis is the principle of organization which states that any element can have attention drawn to it if it's notably different. In this example, the only part of the image not anaglyph'd is the top portion, which also differs from the moonscape below by being text.

I can't recall exactly what I did with the warps on each individual color of this image and I don't have a pair of red/cyan 3D glasses on me to test it, so if you look at this image in 3D and it detaches your corneas, I apologize.

Midterm Week! Day 2

Similarity is where elements are seen as the same group if they have a similar shape or texture. I tried to embody both with these separated panels. Funny thing is the panels are actually taken from the original image, and the only color manipulation used is on the background.

The picture is San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, taken from the Santiago Adventures website.

Midterm Week! Day 1

Spring break is fast approaching, and that means midterms are upon us! Most of my midterm assignments are pretty basic. I've got a paper to write for Composition and a report for Journalism, but 2D Design is going all-out.

Some of you may remember the gestalt and organization posts I've made in the past for this class. Well, our midterm project is to find seven nature photographs and modify them to reflect what we've learned. Four for the principles of gestalt (proximity, closure, similarity, and continuity) and three for the principles of organization (balance, emphasis, and rhythm). I'm making this a week-long series so that I can motivate myself to get them done at a steady pace. Here's the first. Closure, based on a panorama of Split Apple Beach taken by Amiram Zocowitzky:

Closure is a gestalt principle that states that familiar shapes can be seen as complete even when they are not. It's easy to perceive this planetoid as a circle despite the variance of form seen throughout.

I'm probably not going to go in any particular order with this project, so I can't say which one I'm doing tomorrow. Let's check back here tomorrow and we'll both find out.



Gestalt Week! Day 7

And with that, Gestalt Week is over! I have nothing more to say on the subject!

Gestalt Week! Day 6

About one out of every five posts on this blog is about gestalt. It's a pretty basic design principle. We're done learning about it in school. I don't want this to be that blog that talks about gestalt all the time. In the future I should do some better week-long series.

This one is lines.

Gestalt Week! Day 5

My instructor doesn't like arrows. He thinks they're a cheap way to draw attention to something, a universal symbol that serves as a shortcut when legitimate methods would work equally as well.

So I made him this.

It's gonna be a good school year.

Gestalt Week! Day 4

In case anyone was wondering, I made all these for extra credit. It just occurred to me that I was tagging all of these "school" without ever really explaining why.

It's difficult to find things to say about this after a few days.

Banana.

Gestalt Week! Day 3

White space at the cost of balance! Hooray!

Gestalt Week! Day 2

Gestalt week continues! For whatever reason I have a bunch of these!

Gestalt Week! Day 1

I haven't posted in a while. Mostly because there hasn't been a lot to post. It's been all essays and videos this past week, and I can't guarantee next week will have much else in it. So here's a week of more gestalt stuff!

Rules:

1. Four panels, one principle of gestalt on each.
2. Designs must be subtractive: no white outside the panels may be added.
3. Black and white only. No shades of gray.

So here's some minimalism!

Gestalt Water

Today the subject of our lesson was gestalt, the psychology of perceiving patterns. The assignment was to represent the four properties that related to design in four panels. They are, as follows:

Proximity: Elements close together are seen as part of the same group or shape. This is demonstrated in the first panel, where a bunch of wobbly dohickamajigs seem to make one larger dohickamajig.

Closure: Familiar shapes can be seen as complete even when they are not. Take the implied giant circle in the second panel, which dwarves the tiny circles surrounding it without even existing.

Similarity: Elements are seen as the same group if they have a similar shape. This is seen in panel two and three, but three was really made to showcase it. Three is also sort of proximity if you think about it.

Continuity: If a number of points or shapes are aligned into a line or curve, they'll be recognized as a shape. The tail in panel four was originally hollow, with just a dotted outline, but the extreme whitespace stood out a bit too much. And hey: why does the whole thing look like a whale? Yup. Continuity.

It's fun review to explain the principles behind this project. There might be a lot of that at first while I'm still learning the fundamentals.